My Own Personal Revolution
by sedemihcrA
Summary: AxS So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye? So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
1. I'm still attached

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Evangelion and I don't do this for personal profit. If you're upset about something you see here, e-mail me at the address listed under my account.

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

"_You say you want a revolution_

_Well you know_

_We all want to change the world_

_You tell me that it's evolution_

_Well you know_

_We all want to change the world_

_But when you talk about destruction_

_Don't you know that you can count me out_

_Don't you know it's gonna be_

_Alright"_

_--The Beatles, Revolution_

On the fifth of May, Asuka Langley Souryu was shot. I know because I was there. I know because I saw it happen. Maybe because I let it happen. My name is Shinji Ikari. And when you say it you better fucking whisper.

I thought about changing my last name for a while, I really did. I was thinking about changing it to Ayanami but it just seemed a little... weird? I guess after everything that psychopath put us through I wanted to do anything I could do to escape his memory. But one day, searching through the National Tokyo Library, I came upon a study in an obscure field of quantum physics by a little known PhD at the time: Gendo Rokubungi. I must have forgotten that _he_ took my mother's name; not the other way around. That's why I keep it. A little pride maybe. But mostly it's the memory I have no intention of escaping—the memory of a woman who gave us everything and asked for nothing in return; memories of a woman who sacrificed herself for a better life, my life.

In a few days I'll no longer be a college freshman at Tokyo's New Keio University. In a few days my new, dull summer job is supposed to begin. In a few days, the six of us are about to complete a legendary year that would live on in Keio myth long after we graduated; stories both true and false that would circulate forver thanks to the rest of our peers, things not even Misato would have believed if she'd heard them. In a few days, I'd become the man no one could have imagined back at NERV. The one who would have stood up to his father—the one who did not take anyone's shit. The me I would sometimes imagine Asuka falling in love with. But right now. Right now I'm a little busy. You see, I'm bleeding out actually—dying. D-Y-I-N-G. I know, right? Who would have thought? Me. Invincible Shinji finally lost.

And to be perfectly honest, this whole dying thing? It feels... really, really easy. A lot easier than living ever was.

* * *

**First Revolution: I'm still attached.**

* * *

They say you never forget your freshman roommate from college but they never say why. They never tell you if it's his bad breath or his awful taste in music. They never tell you if it's that toothy grin he makes the first time you crack a joke or the particular way he arranges his utensils in the cafeteria. You hear the horror stories and the life-long friendships too and you're left in this no man's land, wondering which variety you'll end up with. 

In fact, you truly don't know until those first moments when Misato is ducking out of your room after that sort of awkward hug, brushing tears from the corners of her eyes and you hear the warble of Osaka slang that's not quite the act Touji's is but it's still something familiar and amusing to the ears.

That was the moment I first knew we'd be friends. When he kept going on about the "smoking hot babe" who dropped me off and asked if she was my girlfriend; not just to humor me but because he really didn't recognize her. It was the way he didn't go all googly-eyed when he _did_ recognize who I was or start asking any of the awkward questions about a time in my life that is by no means the highlight everyone assumes it to be—the glory goes hand in hand with the pathos when it comes to the Eva days and, that is something all three of us pilots can vouch for.

No, he's not like most of the people I've met. He's very relaxed, full of smiles, with a nervous slur that wiggles into the southern slang when he gets excited. In some moments he's oddly reminiscent of Kensuke's enthusiasm when he's got his camera in hand but it's much more open and welcoming. Perhaps even like Kaoru which sends a tremor through my hands before I can trick my mind into never making that connection again.

His black hair is unruly, thrusting in several directions, his skin tan from too much time spent lounging on the beach and not enough time working the shitty summer jobs I suffered through before arriving at Keio. He's describing his first girlfriend in high school and what a psycho-bitch she could be to him and suddenly I realize the knot in my stomach is unwinding, heartbeat slowing back down again. I realize what a huge relief it is to have a new friend at school, not just Touji or Kensuke or... well not her, no. And Kazu is not some leech either, only interested in attaching himself to "Shinji, the myth, the mystery, the man." He's really just another normal guy, just like myself, full of flaws and goodness and humanity. Or at least, I really want to believe this is true.

* * *

Our first time in the cafeteria goes by awkwardly with at least two pairs of eyes on me at all times and enough whispering to make me genuinely uncomfortable. Kazu must see the way I start to shrink down in my seat, wishing my hearing was not quite as good as it is; he doesn't ask me "what's the matter" (thank the heavens!) but starts using mouthfuls of food, ugly stares, or wild gesturing to distract what feel like a spotlight enshrining me on the plastic chair and linoleum floor. I try not to lift my gaze from the dinner plate except to return his inquiries and sometimes not even for that. 

Eventually he gives up trying to annoy everyone else in the room, which he was achieving semi-effectively, and works on distracting me instead. I'm not sure whether or not I appreciate this either.

"So, I heard there's a bunch of other people from your school enrolled here too."

It's not really a question but he's staring at me, waiting for an answer.

"Yeah. A few." I'm trying not to count the number of times I've heard "pilot" in the last half-hour and failing miserably: forty-seven. Forty-eight now thanks to a Russian girl in the corner of my eye who is a head taller than anyone else at the table and looks like she's ten years older than me. I curse being a late bloomer and I curse my good hearing again.

Kazu waves a hand in my direction. "Hey! Were you listening to me? I asked if you knew any of them?"

"These people?" I wearily glance around the room and catch several embarrassed-looking faces turning away from our table.

"No, stupid!" he laughs, but I can tell he's just trying to cheer me up. "I meant people from your high school. Do you know anyone who came here?"

Slowly the antenna retract from the room and I try and remember what I was doing with the glass of Coca-Cola in my hand. Drinking it or something like it.

"Oh. Yeah, I know some of them."

I pause, looking up at an exasperated Kazu, his chopsticks frozen in some steaming udon that does not taste like real udon because it most definitely isn't.

"Like names? I assume they have names, being people and all."

I snort despite my ill will, and something like a smile must come sneaking out of my mouth because Kazu brightens immensely when I look at him again.

"Yeah, uh, Touji Suzuhara. He's here on a basketball scholarship. Kensuke Aida is in the film school here. Hikari Horaki, she's pre-law I believe."

Kazu makes thoughtful sounds behind mouthfuls of teriyaki. I find that smile sneaking up again, watching the way he eats—it is, by Tokyo standards, absolutely ridiculous.

"Say," he says, looking up slightly as if recalling some other high school story. It is sort of. "Wasn't that Suzuhara guy, wasn't he going to be a pilot as well?"

_Shinji I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner—the Fourth Child is... he's._

"You okay?" Kazu's leaning over both of our trays, face uncomfortably close with a nervous smile. I recoil away.

"Yeah it's just." It's just I hate those fucking memories. "It's just, don't talk about him that way. As a pilot I mean." I don't elaborate any further.

Kazu looks only moderately hurt.

"Oh. Sorry."

"No, forget it," I say, knowing he won't and maybe wanting it to be that way.

He brightens as if the moment never happened, humming some tune to himself in between mouthfuls that once again puts me on the verge of a smile that I now most firmly believe should not be there.

"Wasn't the other pilot at your school too?" he says around a mouthful.

I try so hard not to sigh at this. Keeping my expression as neutral as I can, I nod.

"She's here too right? I mean, she graduated with you guys, right?"

I'm trying to remember why I ever thought Kazu wasn't the prying type.

"She already had her college degree before coming to Japan. But." It's almost like I don't want to admit it's true. "Yeah, I think she's here too."

"You think? I thought you guys, like, uh..." he says and then realizes that he's stumbled into dangerous territory from the look I give him.

"Lived together? We did for a while. Not afterwards. We... drifted apart."

"Oh." He doesn't look hurt this time, only curious. I feel partially thankful for that and partially angry too.

"Asuka, right?" he says after a moment of digesting what I'd said.

"Yeah. Her." I can't keep my tone neutral this time. As we leave I know I will always hate eating at the cafeteria.

* * *

The auditorium full of bright-eyed freshman, nervously mingling and talking, smelled of too much perfume and hormones and I, for one, am glad to have left early. Kazu was falling asleep during the principal's speech about the newest generation to make our country proud and blah blah blah who the fuck cares, Keio's the best and all you other schools are sucky imitations, etc., etc. I was just glad to have them paying attention to someone else in the room. 

I spot Touji and Kensuke milling around the entrance and the two shout my way when they see me.

We introduce our roommates to each other, forming a little squad of six for the time being. Touji's roomed with a shy, good-looking guy who's on the swimming team. His eyes look a little glazed over from all the excitement and I get the distinct feeling he doesn't want to be here—college that is. Kensuke's roommate is a loud-mouthed literature major who takes up most of the conversation making fun of other people he's seen around campus today. I roll my eyes when he's not looking and Touji smiles a little, shrugging. Everyone seems to like Kazu though. He's not overly annoying like Daisuke, who cannot stop talking about this hot girl he saw earlier now. And he's not like the swimmer, Ryo, who seems unwilling to add anything unless directly asked.

I keep reminding myself that these guys have never met any of us and not to take their nervous social forays (or obviously insecure, in Daisuke's case) as anything other than students just getting to know each other.

Touji yammers on about some lousy summer job he had that actually sounds worse than mine. Kensuke is excited about a new project he's working on with some other guys in the film department and he's trying to get us to volunteer our time to help him—he's already promised Touji a part if he'll help lug equipment. Before I can even begin to talk about the summer spent living with Misato, which I can already imagine all of them drooling over, Daisuke's yelp catches our collective attention.

"There!" He's jabbing his finger across the lawn. "There she is man!" he whispers. "That's the girl I saw today."

All I see is red hell. She looks up and for a moment her face fills with recognition but then she's looking away, walking past as if she never knew any of us. She's alone, which I expected. And she's wearing a skirt one size too small. Which I also expected.

"Did you see that!" Daisuke's practically hopping up and down. "She looked this way!" he squeals.

I'm deeply considering saying something to N2 the conversation into oblivion when Kazu cuts in.

"Off limits, man."

"What?"

Daisuke whirls his gaze off her ass receding into the distance.

"Don't tell me one of you is already hitting that?" He frowns.

"That's the Second Child, idiot! The Eva Pilot!" Kensuke says, borderline furious at his new roommate.

All five of us nod when he looks around the group.

"Shit!" He kicks some dirt and then looks up at me. "So I guess you two are already—"

"We're not. By all means, feel free to try," and I sputter into jealously before I can say anything further, jealousy for which I will wind up hating myself over tonight.

"It's your funeral," Touji says sagely.

"Why? Is she like a bi—"

"No." And I instantly regret as it leaves my mouth and everyone is looking at me again now. Why am I sticking up for her? Why the fuck should I care what they say about her? "I mean, I don't know, yes. She's high maintenance. Or something," I mutter, mostly to myself.

Daisuke, ignores how uncomfortable I must look. "But you never—"

"No. Never." I'm relieved that I feel nothing as the words leave my lips.

"Well..." He grins, cracking his knuckles.

I glance at Kensuke looking at me through wide-rimmed glasses, apologies written all over his face. Touji is just brooding and and only Ryo seems interested in the exchange.

After a few partings words and a whispered apology from Kensuke we head our separate ways. When we get to our room I drag myself into the shower while Kazu tries to finish unpacking. I masturbate with the new shampoo I bought and imagine Misato bent over in front of me, begging for more. I feel a little guilty as I'm toweling off but exhaustion takes over and I hit the bed around midnight. Before sleep takes me, I try and remember what I thought I would feel like, my first day as a freshman, and I find myself strangely disappointed that I've lived up to my own expectations.

I try and convince myself tomorrow will better and it doesn't work. I'm not a very good liar.

* * *

A/N: I know I'm supposed to be working on "A Thousand Years of Secrecy" but I'm a bad, bad man. I wrote this when I got tired of trying to engineer the complexity that is that story and I finally gave in to the yearning that I really want to write a first-person Shinji. As a rule of thumb, this will be my pet project for when I'm stumped on Secrecy. In later chapters there may be some collegian behavior and if that offends any of you I've probably already turned you away with all the bad language. But if you're uncomfortable with drug references, sex references, underage drinking you'd better steel yourself now because it is firmly part of the college experience and you'll wind up in the middle of it one way or another. Unless you go to some lame ass college. :P 

Don't forget to get your dads a card. Father's day tomorrow.

Peace.


	2. I'm not drunk

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

**Disclaimer**: Alcohol and sex references in the chapter as per the Mature rating. You've been warned.

---

Despite what your parents, your teachers, or even your sempais tell you, college is primarily about substance abuse. Tokyo police are far too busy curbing other nasty tendencies that our slackening immigration has created to be as heavy-handed about cracking down on the youth; they certainly aren't the way they used to be. And Keio being an "international-style university" (whatever that means) seems to help foster a drug culture that I am frankly unaccustomed to. Japan still doesn't card despite a legal drinking age of twenty for reasons I'm not inclined to invest any time in and the club scene is close enough to help make a healthy market for all sorts of other mind-bending chemicals.

Until tonight I used to be able to say that I had partook in none of these, save one secretly experimental night with Misato's Yebisu horde which ended nearly as quickly as it began. But let us rewind, for that is what my mind seems to be doing at the moment.

**--- **

**Second Revolution: I'm not drunk, I'm wasted.**

---

One week has passed with shattering quickness, a rollercoaster ride of emotional width I was not aptly prepared for. From the dull to the amusing, college has run the gamut of experience for me thus far. Kazu and I have oddly wound up in the senior dorms for reasons I don't fully understand thought I often hear the rumors and carefully calculated fictions about why through my roommate who, as it turns out, is quite the social butterfly.

Now. Some of you might be wondering just how I feel about all of this talk about my presence on campus not to mention the presence of one temperamental, self-serving, batshit-insane, super bitchy, ...well I'll leave it as Ms. A as that list could easily go on for some time. I don't like these rumors. I don't like being told about them. But Kazu seems to find them particularly hilarious partially because he knows me well enough to pick out the ones that are absolutely off base about me; the lies that are easily disproven if you've conversed with me for more than five minutes. At some point I will convince him that I don't secretly relish hearing of late night parlays with the dean to ensure A-list treatment of my self and room or whatever other nonsense is being peddled during that day. For now, I remain stoically silent as a true Japanese man should.

So. If that didn't run the social gamut far enough, let me enlighten you further.

Touji is still dating his highschool sweetheart who is far too devoted to her schoolwork for his tastes. Kensuke is busy pounding out his next opus and scraping together whatever talent he can find from the theater department. When he's not in the film lab, he's often filming us doing stupid shit and having some of the most juvenile conversations I can remember since the start of highschool. Daisuke is a dickhead. I have nothing further your Honor. And Ryo has squeezed a few more sentences out of himself; hopefully with the encouragement of the swim team he'll actually be able to respond with more than one-word-answers by the end of the semester. He is apparently quite talented for a freshman which I suppose makes up for the lack of a functioning tongue. I think I may like him best—does that speak volumes about the rest of my scant batch friends? Unfortunately, yes.

Kazu, who I'd previously assumed was a nice person, is also insanely popular and I can't help but feel a little jealous that it has something (okay, a lot of something!) to do with me. Every time he introduces me to someone I feel like I'm some actor being shoveled around a dinner party by his agent. The way he sells my positive qualities, of which I assumed there were an astonishingly small number, is absolutely incredible; sometimes he makes me sound like the nicest human being in the world and I can only assume this will all end in disappointment for any who've gotten that impression.

As I say, we live in one of the senior dorms, and they seem much more laidback than our self-assertive freshman compatriots—a wonderful change of pace from the dysfunctional actresses and the cool obsessed soccer players; trust me when I say I'm acquainted with far too many. Seniors have the wonder of taking social cues with ease and seem far more selective about their conversation with me, quick to back off at my discomfort. Let us praise maturity in all its forms! Amen.

I'd be lying to say I haven't been enjoying myself, though my inner cynic seems to enjoy scowling at whole swathes of the campus and the faculty. I haven't raised my hand once in class partly to stymie the teachers who have the nagging habit of staring at me almost as often as the students do. The rest are just simply to boring to cater to which has left me with a vow of silence that I'm beginning to really appreciate. I can almost feel everyone's hair stand on end when a question comes up and I put on a face that I just might be thinking about answering. Yes, I do relish my power in my own little, perverted ways. Otherwise I'd just be going insane from the pressure, imagined or not.

Ms. A has somehow missed all of the classes I've signed up save one two-hundred student lecture and we both enter and leave out of separate exits for that classroom. Enough about that.

So where are we tonight? A good question actually. It started in my dorm room, or more correctly in a liquor store which specializes in foreign beers and my particular enemy of the night: the forty ounce. Do you know what forty ounces of alcoholic malt beer does to a young Japanese man? Would you like to see? Come by 215 of Matsuda Hall at approximately 7:45PM and watch a good upstanding individual unravel into a blabbering mess on par with a salary man stumbling to his taxi after midnight. I am _fucked up_. And though I can claim that I know where this little journey began I have absolutely no idea where it's taking me. I'm not even sure we're on campus anymore.

We're not in campus anymore, Todo.

I'm laughing my ass of with Kazu though and some people whose names I've already completely forgotten, though they all look my way when I speak so I'm generally safe in that department. Woah. Almost fell over that rock. Where the fuck did that come from?

"You frucking drunk ass slut!" Kazu screams my way.

Some of the intellectuals of our campus look our way and turn absolutely appalled when they notice me in the clusterfuck of stumbling, clearly drunken freshman. As if they had expected better. Well fuck guys. I'm sorry. I guess I should be watching my posture, my diet, how clean my teeth are, how polite my speech is, you know what? No thank you, sir, I already own one and I don't plan on switching to your company no matter how low your interest rates are so you can just hang up already.

Whew.

Where was I? Oh yes. Entering a building (a dorm?). Let's hope Kazu is more sober than I am because I honestly feel like I'm falling down the stairs rather than walking up them as we shout conversation at each other about Giraffes' tongues—turns out they're quite long. Which inevitably leads to more sexual innuendo. God bless Japanese and its wealth of puns.

We're inside someone's room now, presumably whoever was sitting in it when we walked in. I smell something like incense from a temple I went to in Nara once which plunges me into a moment of clear mindedness that's swept away just as quickly as it came with the ritual gulping of some hot, clear liquid out of very miniature glasses. There was a "kampai" somewhere in there I swear.

Back out and down the stairs, new people in tow and now I really feeling like I'm falling as my feet bounce easily down to each lower step. Back out the door and across the lawn, passing couples and other groups of students who seem quite interested in our little roaming party and far too shy to do anything about it. I empathize with them for a moment, realizing that I was like that once and then realizing that I still am and then realizing that they only look that way because I'm in the middle of this group and then realizing that it makes me very haughty/annoyed to realize all this.

Loud J-Pop. We're going into another upperclassmen dorm I think. And Holy shit. Everyone stopped talking. Even the music's off. And they're looking at me. My God! Speak man! Ignore this terrible drug and say something, anything to convince them you were just about to leave.

Speak damnit! Tongue thy name is sloth!

"Whatthefugwhere'dthemusicgolet'sdancebitches!"

Where the hell did that come from? My mouth? Everyone's laughing and the music is back on. Someone's handing me a drink. Well done man! Not exactly what we had in mind but sometimes you just have to improvise. Kazu's off to get some foreign-sounding drink and I'm shaking my ass in living room next to a bunch of sweaty, happy students. Free at last, thank God almighty I'm free at last. Did I mention I don't know how to shake my ass?

Yes, college what a mystical place; the people, the experiences, and the quest for knowledge. Some girl is grinding her ass so hard against me I can feel the size and shape (perhaps even material) of her underwear and to think—just a few hours ago I thought this night was going nowhere fast. The room fades into the motion and noise of the night, fades into the inadequate light, fades into the inadequate sobriety.

---

I wake up with the distinct and sudden realization that I am not in my room. I am in "a" room yes but not "my" room. And as I shift my eyes off the James Dean poster on the ceiling, I'm struck that I'm most certainly naked and there is most certainly someone else's arms wrapped around me. And breasts. Very soft, very warm breasts.

Being unused such situations, I force myself to calm down. I try and pretend I can't feel the boiling fury of a headache, the likes of which I've never known, crushing down on my skull and shift my eyes just slightly to the side to try and conjure the face which is breathing softly into my ear and clasping my bear chest. The face that belongs to the thigh, a most thoroughly unclothed thigh, into which my erection is pressing. I can barely make out long dark hair in my periphery. I try and shift my weight a little further and she mutters something beautiful under her breath and I almost gasp when I look into the face. It is beautiful. _She_ is beautiful, and we are lying in a tiny bed, _her bed_ perhaps, both naked and pressed together. Do human beings normally lie next to each other naked in tiny beds with arms around each other? I try and think about this question for a moment and realize that they do in fact, usually after having had sex. Which sends my heart into another back flip. I'm a virgin. Wait. Am. I? Could it possibly...

As I frantically try and recall the events of the previous night, everything falls out of order and I find myself unable to connect one memory to the other. A bathroom with a little hawaiin bobble doll playing a tiny ukele. A stone path through campus covered red and yellow leaves. Someone's hand down the back of my pants as bodies thump against me to an unseen beat I'm moving with. And Kazu picking out to bottles of yellowish liquid by the name of "Old English."

Can it possibly be that I've lost my virginity within one week of being at college? I weigh out the possibilities, particularly my current situation and decide that it quite thoroughly could be. It might even be likely. And stare as I might into this beautiful face, I find no name, no memory connecting to herself, quite a lot of which I can feel against me at the moment. As if conjured by my look her eyes flutter open and a grin like slow melting butter drips onto her face.

"Were you watching me sleep?" She does not shift her breasts off me or gasp or slap me as I've already anticipated and prepared myself for. Which makes all my preparations for naught.

"I—uh." Uh-oh. This is not good. Not good at all Shinji.

She giggles, which sends my heart fluttering all over again. And then she kisses me on the lips very softly and I find myself leaning a little closer by no will of my own.

"You were _really_ drunk last night, weren't you?"

Feeling no other avenue in this insanely intimate conversation, I answer honestly. "Yes." One-syllables seem to be my thing today. Almost as if a piece of Ryo has rubbed off on me. Perhaps I'll do some backstroke after breakfast.

"But you had a good time right?" she says semi-curiously, semi-encouragingly.

Honesty is the best policy. "I actually don't really remember."

"Oh." She frowns. "Well let me remind you."

She rolls me sideways and takes my breath away with one very soft, very feminine hand while she sits down on my chest.

"Slowly this time. I'm still kinda tired." She winks at me. "Oh and one more thing. No more calling me 'Misato' got it? It's Yuki, silly-head."

"Yes, Yuki," I say because I cannot speak any further. Just inhale and exhale very quickly.

Afterwards we don't speak, she just takes me by the hand into the shower. Which is another new and pleasant experience. She emerges before me and stops me with a shake of the head when I try and leave.

"I don't want you to see me getting dressed; it makes me self-concious," she explains. Which seems odd given the rest of the morning but I agree dumbly. She shouts at me from the other room that it's okay to come out and I slowly walk out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist.

She slides one finger down my chest and leans in to kiss me on the cheek, tucking a business card into my towel as she does.

"That's my number. I've got to get to work now but call me later, okay?"

I nod and she smiles the same smile at me again.

"I mean it!"

Then she's out the door and I'm looking at the cell phone number written on the back of the exquisitely crafted kanji which seems like such contradiction for reasons I don't fully understand.

Yuki. Ikeda Yuki took my virginity. And she wants me to call her. The only thing I know about her is what she looks like naked, and what's on her business card.

College is a _very_ odd place.

---

A very late chapter two. I just finished up a month without internet yesterday, so by all definitions this is actually somewhat expedient. Still I apologize. I expected to have the second chapter out in time to explain the delay before it would happen but it just wouldn't come until tonight. I hope I blew some minds with that ending. Admittedly this chapter was written very very quickly for me. Less than three hours I think.

I also apologize for the mini-line breaks. FFN's linebreak function is completely on the fritz and copy-pasting has no effect on this beast. Curse you FFN, CURSE YOUUUUU:o

I hope you guys enjoyed it and I hope I can write the next one as quickly. As always the reviews are deeply appreciated and I've taken all thoughts/criticisms into mind (rereading them all several times actually) before typing this chapter. To answer one question, the names have no special significance and any similarity to Digimon is purely coincidental. They are just Japanese names, named after people I met or heard about in Tokyo. Not even any real connection to those people. That's all. More to come. Much love.


	3. I can speak

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

**Disclaimer:** A lil' gore and plenty of harsh language as per the Mature rating. Nothing you guys aren't used to from me.

---

"And so, with the advent of the nuclear age, the entirety of twentieth century society would cease to be the same in many, many ways. Inaugurated first on our native soil in Hiroshima, then again in Nagasaki, these two stunning demonstrations of the power of atomics would directly give rise to the cold war situation which was to follow post-war occupation of Japan.

"In fact, as you may or may not know, Japan is currently the most scarred country of non-test purposed atomic weaponry counting not only Nuclear but also the Non-Nuclear solutions developed out of pre-Impact research in Antartica…

He's doing it again. Don't get me wrong, I like Okada-sensei, but honestly why do you have to look at me? There are other students in the class. There are plenty of other freshmen to single out and it's only the second week for crying out loud. I mean, really, what have I done to deserve so much attention? Other than pilot a giant humanoid robot in defense of the planet. I'm sure one of them scored better in the history section of their exams than me so really can't you just—

"Which brings us to the Evangelions."

Leave me out of the picture. Fuck.

"Mr. Ikari, everyone else has already spoken thus far." You _really_ don't have to preface it that way. "I understand if you feel uncomfortable talking about the situation but, could you perhaps enlighten us as to why or even why _not_ the Evangelion project could have had many of the same revolutionizing effects that the Nuclear, or N2 revolution had on the planet?"

They're watching me like goddamn owls on a field mouse. And I cannot think up an appropriate bush to hide behind. The fucker called me out.

"Well," I start and the silence is clobbering any whispering to death. Do you know how weird that is? "Nuclear weapons were a revolution in that they in some ways made conventional armies defunct. The first Non-Nuclear weapons removed much of the stigma surrounding atomic weaponry by allowing nations to use them without the radiation side effect."

Okada's eyes are flashing at me with something fierce and delighted. Like he's been waiting his whole career for this conversation.

"Exactly. Which created the necessity of a stronger UN Navy and Army to adequately police countries in possession of such armaments. Especially in the post-flooding economic desperation and tension."

He waves me on.

"Yes, well, what I think I was going to say is that the Evangelions were revolutionary in a new way." Oh if you could see their faces. Eyes like dinner plates and I'm the bloody ringmaster of this carnival of war. "Imagine the destructive power of an N2 bomb, only contained within a tank that you physically could not destroy—something with the invincibility of a _God_. That is more or less the total significance of the Evangelions. Though I can't really get into the details…" Misato made sure to give me the classification pamphlet about everything I'd seen and done in NERV. Let me tell you, that was one hell of a big pamphlet. "What I can say is that, in some ways, had it not been for the Angels, Evangelions would have been one of the worst things to happen in all of human history."

That'll leave them scratching their heads.

"How so, Mr. Ikari?"

"Too much power under the control of only one human being is an inherently dangerous proposition. I know a little about modern combat theory which suggests that even if the occupant ignored the will of its army, without the power connection and proper support, an Evangelion would be useless and very vulnerable very quickly. But this is an imperfect truth."

"Why?"

I smile my impeccable smile.

"I unfortunately cannot tell you that without military clearance. Suffice it to say that I simply _know_ they are wrong."

A round of frustrated and intrigued sounds passes through the room, my neighbors nudging me and whispering "good answer" and other such congratulations. There's this odd empty feeling when the moment fades, after Okada's quick and satisfied nod: once I would have dreaded speaking on this subject, or just the idea of public speaking. Now it's like I'm reveling in this war hero bullshit.

It seems simultaneously dangerous and liberating in the same moment and, I begin to comprehend the incredible snarl of satisfaction Asuka churned out with every TV interview; is this the catharsis she felt in those moments? That expression I'd always mistaken as being pride, really a mask for something else? Is this the relief that we both most desperately wanted and could find neither in each other nor those around us? Was this the quenching of those moments waking up weeping terribly, Misato by my side and cooing that most embarrassing but beautiful refrain that it was all "just a dream, Shinji."

I feel as though I've stumbled upon something profound and ugly in the same moment; an exonerating truth that perhaps the only other to share some of my most deeply personal experiences, perhaps she too was dealing with this fear as best she could. And no matter how we've ridiculed one another, the epiphany leaves me feeling deeply, totally sorry. And bitter that even I had been tricked into that fucking know-it-all façade that none of her experiences in Eva, bad or good, had afflicted her the way they did for me. Is that why she hated me afterwards—that even I could be tricked by that farce, her last little AT Field which was really desperately crying "hold me, don't leave me!"

Gomen ne, Asuka.

---

**Third Revolution: I can speak and say: "I'm sorry."**

---

"Sorry kid, it's nothing personal."

Do you ever have one of those moments where you think: "my God, I could actually die, like, right now?" I'd had a few in Evangelion up until this point but none, _none_ outside of an Entry Plug. And the only thing I could think was how scared—how utterly helpless I was in that moment.

She shoots him just below the shoulder. Then the second. Oh. Oh my God. Don't look up. I don't want to see this.

She's whispering something to him. Bang. Another body slumps to the floor.

"Get up!"

Something in me wants to curl into a ball and die. Maybe. Maybe I would have, if she'd been just a second late.

She must see it in my face. That crushing fear.

"Shinji, it's me. Misato." She tries to sound soothing but it just can't work. There's bodies at my feet. There's bodies in between us. Piling up. With Kaoru's body on the top.

No, I can't get up. I can't do this. I want to go to sleep. Forever.

"Are you going to just sit there and wait for us to die?"

Don't answer. She just wants to use you like everyone else. She turns away disgusted at you. Like Father.

"Then Kaoru really did die for nothing, Shinji. If this is your will, you shouldn't have killed him. At least he would have done _something_."

Screams. Screaming in my head. Misato is saying these things? Then Father is walking away again, and he won't listen as I shout "come back, daddy," because he doesn't care. Rei is twisting that rag into the bucket again. The water's dripping from my mother's hands. Asuka's crying in her sleep but no one is listening. The little girl inside her is inescapable. Misato's crying, listening to the answering machine but I won't go and help her. I won't help any of them. Because I have become my Father and he has become me. Kaoru is smiling at me. He's humming "Ode to Joy" and I realize now it's because he really believes that we people are good things. But he was so wrong. AT Fields, they're ruining us. And now even Misato's abandoning me. After all that time she's leaving me too. Because I wasn't good enough. I'm breaking someone's arm in two. And I'm stabbing them to death with part of their chest. I'm shoving a knife so deep inside this other that we both stop moving. I'm tearing someone inside out. I'm punching Touji's head in. Like a balloon. And now I'm eating someone's chest open. I'm stabbing Asuka in the neck. And sawing Kaoru's head off. All this time, a killer has been waiting. He's been waiting for this moment. This worthless moment. Of suicide. Of just existing. With no one to comfort me and no one for me to comfort. A fundamental loneliness. This is my AT Field, my madness. Misato's left me with the dead and now finally, there's truly no one.

"Wait!"

A killer's voice.

---

She never explains the tears in her eyes during the car ride. Doesn't explain them in the tiny elevator either. There's an awful silence between us and I know I'm responsible.

As we reach the cage full of bakelite, finally exasperated enough, she really starts to cry. Between her hitching sobs she realizes that it really is hopeless; that my grim silence was this inevitability of weakness. I sit beside her like crumpled paper, unwilling to engage her any further. She knows she broke me for nothing. The radio's not working anymore and she dashes it against the wall, destroying its crackle-hiss.

Asuka is fighting, somewhere above us. She's running out of time. And I'm letting it happen. Because I have become my father and my father has become me. It's no use, so why bother thinking about it. Even if Asuka dies, there's nothing I can do.

_Do you care about them Ikari?_

Kaoru's floating iridescent just beyond the railing. His neck is twisted off. I won't look. Don't look at what you did to him. Killer-child.

_Do you care about these three women in your life that you don't understand, that don't understand you?_

Ignore him. What do the dead have to say anyways?

_You are not your father._

My eyes bolt up to meet his gentle face and, I startle Misato out of her sobs. Kaoru is opening his hand towards me, extending the milky palm just beneath my nose.

_Do you truly feel alone because of your AT Field? Do you feel it's the cause of all the sorrows in your life? Rei can fully manipulate her AT Field; even though she appears distant to others, her comprehension of you—of everyone—is total. Why do you choose not to use your AT Field? It is not only a barrier of souls, it is also a doorway between them._

I'm standing up. It's the tingling on the tiny hairs at the back of my neck. This sensation that I know what I must do. That _I mustn't run away._ Kaoru's smiling at me now, intact, beautiful. He's whole again, the same soft smile as when we first met. The hand floats there, waiting for me. And I grasp its soft warmth.

_Goodbye, Ikari._

Goodbye, Kaoru-kun.

"Misato. I love you."

"Shinji, what are you—"

Yui's hand explodes free of the bakelite with a shuddering thunder. It's encapsulating me in fingers armored with steel and soul. Pulling me back in, towards my fate, my destiny. I'll save them. I'll save all these wonderful women, as many as I can. No matter how much pain it causes me, no matter whom I have to kill.

I told you too much power under the control of only one human being is an inherently dangerous proposition. And I have the vengeance of an angry God, riding in the wings.

---

I'm nearly stumbling as I leave the seminar, ideas and emotions tumbling free like so much molten lava from the caldera of my head. I will confess quite easily that guilt was not a regular emotions in my repertoire; yes I spent most of my youth in shame, but I really only began to assume things were my fault near the end of my NERV experience and even that was a short-lived moment; there's nothing like the gratitude of a nation, hell the planet, to squash even the nastiest of those feelings.

And admittedly, I really sorted out a lot of those things in my last sortie in Unit 01. Thanks, mom.

But. There was the situation with Asuka. I think a lot of people never understood the full extent of how dysfunctional we were together, with the exception of maybe Misato. And after she moved out of the apartment, things only got worse. I won't fault NERV for giving us those incredible paychecks, and even if I won't be allowed to play with mine until I turn twenty, Misato isn't particularly tight-fisted about our millions. But it gave Asuka an out from the fighting, the crying (mostly my crying here), and everything else storming around our Tokyo-2 hovel. And the worst part was, that once she left, things really were better around the house—what I meant to say before is that things only got worse _between the two of us_. We weren't on speaking terms before graduation.

I had the selfish assumption that most of our disagreements were her fault. And I'm probably quite right in that assumption which made it all the easier to believe. But it doesn't change the fact that I did things and said things I shouldn't have. And if I really cared about her the way I once thought I did, I should have found the strength to forgive her. Fucking AT Field and all.

But, when you idealize someone the way I did with Asuka the images of your teenage mind can shatter pretty firmly given enough time. I probably once believed I was in love with her but she helped me come to my senses, or rather ignore them, and I'm not entirely sure if I can ever forgive her for that. Until today anyway, where, in Okada's "History of War in Asia" of all things, something fell on me like brick and I can't get it off my mind.

Ain't that a trip?

As I trudge through our front door, still spinning, I find Kazu staring me down deadly serious.

"Dude, we missed the deadlines for club signup."

Uh oh.

"Do you know what that means?" It means that we're going to be social outcasts for our first year on campus if we don't do something very, very quickly. "It means we're going to be social outcasts! For the whole year! We have to do something!" That's what I said!

"So let's make our own," I offer harmlessly enough.

And thus began the freshman year phenomenon, born out of sloth and a need for acceptance from our peers; an idea that would lead to some of the first real legends and tragedies of Keio campus lore. An idea that would lead to my own personal revolution because, as it turns out, ideas can be powerful, dangerous things.

---

A/N: Much love to all the helpful (and just plain nice) reviews. Secrecy is still on hold while I sort out my college's registration procedures. I was seriously considering leaving the middle of this chapter until much later but the beginning just started writing itself last night and then the next thing you know I was finishing this chapter up today. I didn't proof this nearly enough so I'm sorry if anything seems rusty, mis-spelled but I was eager to show that I'm still writing this. And all of the positive feedback was a helpful motivator obviously. Here's hoping you enjoyed this as much as I did writing it!


	4. I am a jerk

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

Touji is demolishing them. And I don't mean to sound smug but, when you see a kid with a prosthetic arm and leg, a _freshman_ for crying out loud, absolutely wrecking shop in the opening game of the season like he's the star-senior on crack, it is nearly impossible not to scream. That's what everyone is doing as the NERV logos on aluminum joints bounce across the laminate and make a fade away jumper look like it's something you were born to do. And maybe he was; for all of the chances I should have taken from Touji, here he is absolutely dominating their upperclassmen first string like he shot out of the womb for this moment. Take it to 'em, Suzuhara.

I said guilt was an emotion that remained largely out of my repertoire _for the most part_; take Touji to be my glaring exception. I think we must have sobbed against each other for a good half-hour the first time I saw him in the hospital bed. Thank God, Hikari had the good sense to leave his side for one of the few moments of their companionship and just let us get it over with.

I didn't even attempt feeble explanations. Dummy Plug or not, it was _my fault_ and maybe something I can never atone for; but at least I had the good sense to come to grips with what I'd done, how his life was irreversibly changed, how everyone else's life was changed. And the friendship formed out of this miscast fate became undeniably stronger, some great hydra that refused to die. Touji was a fucking hydra after all; he may have lost two limbs but he played basketball like he had six.

He was, in many ways, more famous than me. An international super-star for survivors, not seen since the likes of that post-Impact American cycling maniac who beat out cancer and the French—cancer, by the way, doesn't surrender quite that easily. And now, Touji had eclipsed the western superstar, throwing in his own eastern heritage for a healthy does of rejuvenated stardom. He was amputee'd in the most tragic and epic way the public could imagine; they knew not much more than the mis-activation of Unit 03 as its precursor.

Yes, he like the other children, had given up some very _literal_ part of himself for the betterment and future of all mankind. Now he was being scouted by the NBA, had his name plastered on two different world-class hospitals in Asia, and was running an innumerable amount of charities for kids with disabilities. By some strange twist of events, I made Touji who he is today, and he is certainly nothing less for it.

Hikari is sitting beside myself and Kazu and is quick to fly into fits of "class-repness" as I've taken to calling it, the only difference being that she will shout like a maniac _on_ Touji's behalf rather than _at_ him. If the rest of our stands weren't already galvanized by his incredible presence on the court, I have no doubt she'd be leading the vocal pack.

I'm wearing school colors and trying not to look too inconspicuous as I gulp at a Sapporo one of our neighbors handed to us on the way in. Yes, senior dorms kick ass. Kazu is accompanied by _two_ females both of which I've found oddly disarming to the point I've given up being jealous of him. Considering the way they glow every time I speak to one of them, I don't have too much to worry about in that department I suppose.

Yes it is a cheery Thursday evening and our Keio is congregated in the thousands for our opening night against poor old Izu University. Oops, one of them came very near to fouling Touji and received some hearty boos from what I think could have been both sides of the stands. No one hits a cripple in Keio. Oh gallows humor, how my mind does enjoy thee so.

All joking aside, sorry Kensuke but Touji is no doubt my best friend on the planet earth. Not always the brightest or most forthright individual, he has picked up an amazing ability for being a moral compass when I need it. Considering this was once the kid who knocked the shit out of me on his first day back in school you may take that with some grain of Machiavellian rice but consider that Touji, for all the misfortunes that befell himself and his family, never once after that point held a grudge, even against NERV. I'm convinced there's something healthy about that and hope one day I discover its secret for my own bag of tricks, which are so far limited to seething cynicism and humility in even doses.

Trouble in red is somewhere behind my right shoulder, out of sight but demanding a torpor of attention in the back of my mind ever since Okada's class. I will, at some point, after much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, work up the nerve to look her up in the directory and sit down to have a talk with her. Once I'm convinced she still doesn't thrive on hating my guts.

No, it is not that woman which is giving me trouble as first half winds towards its one-sided close, rather it is the one making her way toward me down our row of seats. The one who's business card has been sitting in my desk for the past several days, a monochrome monolith of unreasonable intimidation, daring me to call the number. I even put it into my cell phone only to give up halfway. She's locked onto me like a UN cruise missile out of those first moments watching Sachiel lumber into view past Tokai mountains. By God, Ahab has surely harpooned me and I struggle beneath his hook futilely.

She plops down besides me quietly enough.

"I want to talk to you. In private."

He's a damn fine shot that Ahab and I feel the rope winding in as she casually picks up my left hand with her right. Yuki Ikeda, a vixen even under the harsh indoor stadium lighting, has the most tremulous, sad look on her face and I'm utterly, completely buggered.

* * *

**Fourth Revolution: I am a jerk (by accident).**

* * *

"Look it's really not that big of a deal. I mean…" she sighs in a way that makes me almost whimper. "If you don't want to see me again or whatever, that's fine. I just." She stumbles. "I just want to be friends with you, if possible. And I want you to know I don't usually do that kind of thing."

A blush teeters across her sculpted cheeks as she looks away pausing.

"And please, if that's what you want, please don't tell anyone this happened okay. Don't get me wrong, Shinji. You're a really great guy, heck I'm sure a lot of girls like you already, but I don't want people going around thinking I'm some sort of…" she cringes "some sort of slut or something."

What have you done, you indecisive bastard? You hit the sack with probably one of the most beautiful girls on campus, and despite her encouragement, despite your notable gain in experience, you've dealt with this thing all the wrong way. And now as the two of you stand awkwardly across from one another, beside the trophy cases and the water fountain, she's pouring her heart out for you to not defile that most sacred memory of her any further. And you, of all people, had somehow worked up in your little sniveling conscious a fear enough to not call her back and to call into question all your hard work (or lack thereof).

Yes, the girl you've been daydreaming about on-and-off for days on end has finally gotten the hint that you aren't interested. How the fuck did you pull that off, you dimwit? Because it deserves an award in your national female fuck-up hall of fame right along side _landing on Rei in the nude and showing Misato your junkitude_. That's a gaudy fucking accomplishment for a whole lot of nothing.

This better be spectacular. Channel some fucking Ryouji Kaji shit. Seriously.

"Listen…"

So far so good.

"Yuki, I made a really big mistake."

Oh, oh my God. She's crying now. Jesus, this just gets better and better.

"No, I mean, I made a really big mistake in not calling you back. I was really," be honest, "_intimidated_. I mean, it's not exactly like I go around doing that either. And I really didn't know anything about you. I was just afraid that the Shinji you took back to your room that night wouldn't be the same as the one who called you the next day. I was just afraid… I wouldn't live up to your expectations. If that makes any sort of sense. So if you just want to be friends, that's." The whole world deflates around me until the syllables are covered in gray. "That's fine."

I try and keep an even voice at the end, all the while my mind screaming that it would most certainly not be fine; that it would be a mistake of Titanic proportions. And though Kaji probably would have scoffed at the vulnerability of my exposition, I imagine that I'm already riding on enough reputation going into this conversation that acting cool or debonair is probably not earning me a whole lot of brownie points.

She sniffles and as she reaches up to dry her eyes, my hand grabs a life of its own and magically intercepts her touch. She looks up, startled by the intimate gesture as I wipe away the salty streaks with a thumb.

"And I'm really sorry for making you cry. That was the last thing I intended," I whisper, our faces close enough that I feel her breath on my upper lip. Her eyes are sinking me further and further with every moment. How could I have ever even _considered_ letting her pass me by? How could I _hurt_ someone like this?

"Shinji, I—is this, what you want?" She leans closer. I can almost feel the lips hovering above mine, uncertain, hopeful.

"Yes."

The kiss explodes through the tension, cutting like a knife through Kobe beef. Finally some rest for the wicked as our arms clasp each other. I may not know anything about Yuki, but some part of me instinctively trusts her, as if there is something inevitably good in her, waiting to be found. As we explore each other's mouths through the half-time buzzer I imagine we are traveling ever closer to it.

We come back in after the second half has started and, we're holding hands which elicits a nudge and wink from Kazu; it also leads to some excited whispering from his female companions. I stick my tongue out at him and sit down with her, happy that she hasn't relinquished my hand yet. My Sapporo is almost empty when I notice Kazu has dutifully retrieved another which I happily share with Yuki. She seems at every moment to be consumed by quiet satisfaction and I do little to disturb the moment, happy to wait quietly beside her or cheer loudly when Touji pulls off some shot that shouldn't be possible even without being a paraplegic. Izu defense is quickly crumbling under his onslaught.

As the night begins to wind down, Kazu bumps me again when his entourage has skipped off to the bathrooms (no doubt to gossip about him and me in some combination).

"We should have a meeting tonight," he whispers behind cupped hand.

I nod and run over our options. We need three members which is quickly becoming a tough decision. Ryo is proving to be far too mild-mannered for us and Daisuke was unanimously vetoed which leaves us three gaps to fill for our secret council. Girls are out of the question—not so much because it's a boy's club but because we have none we trust other than Hikari which would most likely disapprove of any antics planned.

Speaking of which, we really need to figure out some sort of decent marketing campaign; Touji has his basketball, Kensuke his film, but Kazu and I are really floundering. We can probably escape the social stigma of being club-free based on our relatively popular reputation but it would be nice if we had some mysterious aura to go with us. Kazu figures it will help him pick up women, and based on my exchange of five minutes ago I'm beginning to agree.

The question remains though; how does one advertise a secret club without actually giving it away, or one's own membership for that part? There has to be question of our mutual commitment swirling to properly ignite speculation. Not to mention, if we wind up doing anything that's really breaking the rules, I'd like some anonymity to hide behind—or at least a solid alibi. Yes I know, I said I don't enjoy rumors about me, but a careful counter-balance between that and my enigmatic commitment to our mystery organization sounds healthy. Ambivalence seems to come so natural already I figure why not use it to my advantage, my allure?

I brood over these questions without quite looking like I'm brooding and soon enough Yuki's tugging my sleeve as the ending buzzer rings. It's a landslide and Touji's being heralded with all manner of cheers and catcalls as we file out of the stadium. I'd rush down to congratulate but he catches my gaze up in the stands and I give him thumbs up to which he nods brightly; he's absolutely glowing and not just from the sweat. I let him share his bonding with his team and Hikari for the time being.

As we exit, Yuki still hovers at my side, our arms now entwined which has caught more than a few hurried glances from departing students. Miraculously, Asuka is nowhere to be seen for I cannot even imagine what sort of malice this scene would conjure from her. I'm partially convinced she is perpetually obsessed with my unhappiness though I'm sure she'd be loathe to admit it. Hmm, need to work on not thinking like that.

Kazu stares at me, waiting.

"Oh, uh, Yuki I gotta run back to my room real quick and shower, can I…" I run out of steam. Gotta get used to this talking thing.

"Come over. Tonight," she says in a way that makes my breath stutter then she pecks me on the cheek and trots off into the crowd and the night.

"Just how did you manage that, Shinji?" Kazu asks, putting an arm around my shoulders. He smiles at me with a "I know what that was all about" look.

"I honestly have no idea, Kazu. She—I—we… gah, who knows man. Who knows."

Seeming satisfied with my answer he makes some throaty sound of understanding and, we head back to Matsuda for further planning.

Once everyone has arrived we decide on a logo which winds up looking like the faceplate of Lilith's, triangle, eyes, and all—I suggested it for reasons that have no comprehendible meaning to me now. Normally I'd avoid referencing anything to do with those monstrosities but it seems oddly appropriate on this night; perhaps I'm channeling some Asuka now too? Everyone enjoys it, its secret meaning going clear over their heads. We get nowhere on deciding our other three members after much arguing and disagreement so we reluctantly call it a night.

I head over to Yuki's dorm and we make love gently between gasps and giggles. I do not call her Misato this time. Then we curl around each other and snore happily into early Friday morning.

As I drift off, I'm convinced that saying "yes" was most certainly not a mistake.

* * *

A/N: Wow, I did not expect to write this so quickly, or rather so soon after last chapter. Once again the product of about six hours of inspiration over two days and a little proofing thereafter. The lovely responses were a great motivator. Thanks to everyone who reviewed! By the way, Secrecy has a new chapter and you should really be reading it (I'm looking at most of you here). I hope this didn't come off too flat. I figure we needed a little break from the intensity of last chapter before I crank up the volume on you guys again. Yes I do love putting our leading man in all manners of peril. Wish me luck in soccer today. I'll try and score one for you guys! 


	5. My mind is over matters

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

We do Asaren at five-thirty in the morning. _Every_ morning. Why? Because we're insane, that's why. Because we know we need an outrageous regimen to pull off whatever we have planned. What do we have planned? Well, we have Asaren, every morning at five-thirty with weekends off (not holidays though). And that in its self is a hefty plan. Kendo club practices at this time every day. But they aren't insane.

You see.

It changes every day. We alternate who gets to choose exercises, disciplines, and who enforces them. We are all the team captain. We are all our sempai. We are all our kohai. And everything on the list, _everything_, must be completed—if you're hung over, if you've just pulled an all-nighter, or if you've just pulled an all-nighter of the girlfriend variety. If it's too long, we keep going through class; whatever it takes to finish. We don't complain that it's too hard, because like everything we've chosen so far, every day is _too hard_. We show up to class sweaty, panting, disheveled, reeking of body odor and we make no excuses. Our teachers ask us what we were doing and we shrug and say, "couldn't sleep" or just say nothing at all.

Touji usually leads the pack, Kensuke in the rear, Kazu and I alternating second place. Yesterday it was three hours of basic Wushu. Today Kazu has us doing a cross-country routine through the hills he mapped out at random and it looks as if it's going to cut into my morning lecture if we don't get faster. Like, now. I push the burning calves harder and dampen their cries. Pain is something to be crushed, not ignored.

The first two weeks were the worst. I thought I was going to die. The weak part of me did. All that remains is strength. Sometimes we look at each other like we're insane during meetings, then laugh and get over it. No were not the fucking fitness club, we get shitfaced and _then_ we go running at five-thirty in the morning. Why? I told you. Because we really _are_ insane.

We are destroying the Shinji Ikari of my mind. He did not survive this transition. Something new exists in his place. He never bows his head. He never stutters. He's still polite but God help you should you try and walk all over him because Shinji Ikari does not _give a fuck_. He threw that away some time last week through the silent tears of unarmored Kendo practice with Touji and the repeated strikes of a bamboo cane on his shoulders. So that the blood was still seeping through his shirt come the afternoon. So that he almost made Yuki cry for a second time.

We gave up on being strong and started earning it. We are cool, calm, and aloof. We have serious intellectual conversations, we get wasted with the upperclassmen, and we place no one above or below us. We treat all others as nothing less than equal adversaries and give them the respect that deserves, nothing more or less. We do not idolize. We do not faun. We do _not_ whine.

How did this happen? Anything is possible with a little sense of community, madness, and a will to change. Anything. You wouldn't recognize Kensuke now. He dabbles in nude photography from time to time and he has girls falling all over themselves just to be in _one picture_. Kazu reads poetry to full houses at the campus coffee shop at ungodly late hours; he doesn't announce them, he just mentions it in casual conversation and the place is filled to the brim by the time he swaggers in. Touji is fast gaining on every basketball record the school has ever made and me—well I'm just an A student from top to bottom. Not a bookworm though I can pick up just about anything and quote it verbatim; I got over studying a while ago. Given a few more weeks of my favorite Kendo practice, I'm going to challenge the campus' team captain, defeat him or at the very least put up a fight, and sheepishly decline their offers to join their club because "I already have one." Because it sounds fun and I didn't like the way he was looking at Yuki. But mostly because it sounds _fun_. Attitude is our panacea and it works wonders.

As we round into campus, Touji leads the pack into a full on sprint past one of the flyers we've been putting up at random. The triangle and seven eyes has gained a cult status—some say it's a secret frat, some a hidden message from alumni, others have even wilder theories. And no one thinks it has anything to do with us. My logo of choice has been a resounding success in every way possible.

We call ourselves SEELE. Why? Because we're insane my dear, and I plan to eradicate everything I've come to associate with negativity through my life one step at a time. Starting with the symbolic, working my way back to my childhood. It'll come. And it will go up in flames, like everything else I've challenged. Asuka's on the short list. Gendou will come when he comes.

Yes, we trot in, tired as dead dogs, but we hold our heads high; we smile; we wink at the girls who wave; we wink at the girls who are too nervous to wave; we nod gravely at the ill-concealed anger of our jealous male peers; we give a hearty "what'sup" to the un-jealous ones; I wave to _Asuka_. And she does not wave back. It's no sweat. We just ran for three and a half hours—everything, by comparison, is infantile in its ease.

Kazu and I head back to our dorm after handshakes with our counter-parts, never breaking the pace. Neither of us shower. I slap on enough deodorant for both of us and we hit the door at the same moment. We both attend this lecture.

We race to the class on fresh aching feet, and then it's a challenge to see who can catch his breath first to walk into class, which of course forces the other to follow. I win in both races, leaving a slightly redder Kazu to trail me in and take our seats. We sit apart at new seats again—like every time. Because it's fun to introduce chaos to the system.

"If you're going to have Asaren, at least have the good sense to finish up before class starts you two," our teacher scolds from over my shoulder. I turn, shrug, and give my most innocent smile which begets his grunting, stifled admiration that I still have the highest test average of the room. Some students laugh as usual.

"Practicing again, Ikari?" the girl beside me says as I sit down.

I make the same shrug only smaller, just for her. Just like how I treat all the girls in conversation. "Couldn't sleep."

Her grin rewards all my hard effort coupled with a few chuckles from the seats around us.

"What do you practice so hard for?" she says, more seriously.

But how can I answer. What kind of person trains for a goal undescribed, unenvisioned, just a sense that will be important to their schemes one day? A person without much sanity I would imagine.

I twirl the finger by my ear sticking out my tongue and she bops me on the arm playfully. I get enough laughter to deserve a scorned glance from our tiny professor.

* * *

**Fifth Revolution: My mind is over matters.**

* * *

I roll into the cafeteria and I brush off the more overt stares with a smile all around; I don't care anymore. I'm just Shinji Ikari, some guy. Yuki has our usual table even though I've asked her to switch it around (systems, chaos, and all), she really likes sitting by the windows. I order two helpings of everything; the chefs have given up on looking at my skinny frame incredulously. I don't think they've ever seen anyone enjoy their food so much.

Yuki puts a hand on mine as I lay my overstuffed tray across from her salad. I've got my own special brew of green tea in a Nalgene jug nearly the size of my plate's contents—I'm convinced I'd keel over without the stuff.

"You smell nice," she says, eyes staring through mine.

I blush a little out of habit; her physical touch is enough to tickle the more primal Shinji Ikari.

She's not dressed up—she never does—which really means that she looks fantastic in anything, even my drab wardrobe. She says that I look like I was dressed by an over-protective mother, and given Misato's shopping spree for me this summer, I'm not sure whether I'm inclined to believe her or not.

"How are the other boys?" she asks, brightening.

"Boyish I suppose," I joke between wolfish chomps of the western-style chicken. It tastes about as exciting as gunpowder but my body seems infinitely pleased with each bite. My "super salad" is a thankfully passable recipe modeled on Yuki's lunch of choice but overstuffed with protein.

"Were you a late bloomer in high school?" she says over giggles, watching me chomp with barbarian audacity. They'd call me a gaijin if they didn't think they know me so well. But I don't even know me that well anymore.

"I think I still am a late bloomer," I don't quite joke.

"Don't be modest! I see how those girls look at you…"

"Yeah, yeah." I scratch my head and chug some tea. My body says "thank you, thank you, thank you."

"I'm serious! You'd make me nervous sometimes if I didn't know you better…"

"Yuki…" I admonish.

"I know, I know. I am not trying to have that conversation nor am I implying anything… except how hot my boyfriend looks without any clothes on," she whispers, leaning close enough I can smell the salad on her breath. I teeter on the edge of an erection and down green tea to try freeze my loins in place; Yuki cackles at my facial expression and squeezes my hand.

Yup. Definitely a late bloomer.

"Hey, I'm going to be kind of late tonight, I've got to go out and prepare for uh…" I don't like lying to her.

"Asarenshu?"

I nod. Her face darkens.

"Shinji, I don't…" Her eyes turn teary and the pain transcends into me fully so that I can almost feel the pull, the urge to comfort a counter-balance. Sometimes I really wish I hadn't chosen that Kendo routine. "Don't—hurt yourself, okay?" I see ghost of the face she made when she saw the bruises that night; when she thought Shinji Ikari just might be a much more sick individual than I take myself to be and how scared for me she was. Guilt tickles the nerves of my throat, the lump slowly subsiding.

"Yuki, you know I would never try and make you worry about me. Besides, tomorrow is my choice." She doesn't know much more about our routine than it being physical exertions early in the weekdays. I try and keep SEELE talk at a minimum; I don't want her to wind up as some sort of accomplice in what we do.

"I know, Shinji, I _know_. But it was your choice last time, wasn't it?" Yes, I'd chosen the Kendo practice, in all its brutality. Not so much to be masochistic, it's just very hard to teach yourself how to dodge a wooden sword—a fact I am much more acutely aware of now. This time we'll be doing it standing on a variety of elevated little blocks I'm going to hammer into the ground tonight. Next time, I'll make it harder in some other way, for now it's balance I'm concerned with.

"Yuki," I start, taking her hand in both of mine. "I don't go out every morning with the intention of hurting myself. I do it…" My brain rolls to a stop, struggling with the syllables.

"Why?" she asks, leaning closer. I can feel her concern in her trembling hand. I ignore the sidelines ogling our personal moment—I was dumb enough to bring it up here, I'll accept the consequences.

"I think I was once a very angry, troubled person," I admit, looking away. It's still painful to recall and I'm not sure if I imagine the tears now in my eyes. "This is the only constructive way I know of to get rid of it. If that makes any sense."

Her eyes fill with recognition but the fear lingers.

"Constructive?"

"In my own way, yes. And besides, have you ever seen me looking happier?"

"No." She sighs. "I suppose not."

Reluctantly she digs the chopsticks back into her greens and we discuss classes and what movie we're thinking about for the weekend. She wants to rent this NERV documentary that has me cringing at the thought of sitting through it but we can cross that bridge when it comes. I'm not invincible, no, but I feel like I know when I'll be ready to tell her, at least ready enough to not completely frighten Yuki Ikeda away. The Shinji Ikari of my mind maybe changing, but old habits die very, very hard.

I must be crazy. But the line between genius and madness they say is measured only by what people come to expect of you. And I suppose I've just come to expect something… better of myself.

* * *

"I don't understand, what do you mean we don't need three members? There's seven eyes guys, I thought we agreed on this," I complain. 

"Plus I really like the unlucky connotation it brings up," Kazu adds. He doesn't bring up the fact that four is also "death" in our language, which is slightly cool; then again we already have the logo.

Kensuke just keeps plucking away on the laptop. Not looking up, he says, "I know what you're saying but just hear me out okay. Me and Touji were talking about this earlier."

He spins the laptop around on his knees to face us.

"What the hell is that?" I start skeptically.

"_That_," Touji says, behind a satisfied smirk and crossed arms, "is our three additional members."

"Who are they?" Kazu says, squinting. "I've never seen them on campus before."

"That's because they don't exist," Kensuke explains.

"Wha… Kensuke, are you telling me you… _created_ these three guys?" I ask, skepticism fading.

"More or less," he answers.

"They have everything. Social security numbers, family histories, birth certificates, student ID numbers, driver's licenses, high school diplomas, _passports_. _Everything_," Touji continues.

It dawns on me that I may have awakened some disturbingly powerful in the latent talents of Kensuke Aida and as I glance up at him his confident smile answers me with total assurance—it says, "Section Two would be fooled by these guys."

"This is… incredible, Kensuke," Kazu says, eyes glued on the screen.

"This is our alibi, my friends," he announces. "They all take the biggest lectures we could find and none of them have more than one class together. They're all freshmen like us. They have housing off campus. They have school email addresses. They have cell phone numbers. I'm working on the answering machines right now. For all intents and purposes, no one will ever know if these guys do or don't exist."

I get the sinking feeling that we are embarking on robbing a bank or something of equal legality and even as my mind laughs at the absurdity of it, a nervous apprehension lingers in the back of my mind: just what are we doing all of this for? Pranks are one thing but given our expanding skill set we are opening the door to things our imaginations have yet to even conjure. _Dangerous_ things, something in me says.

"I have a friend with access to the sculpture studio. If we can figure out how to make those faces in latex—"

"Slow down here, guys," I say, holding onto the silence for a moment. "First we have to figure out something to use them for. I'd like to start off small, if possible."

"We already did," Touji counters nonchalantly. "We put the flyers up."

"Touché. But lets take things one step at a time."

We ramble on into the evening so that I don't finish hammering until midnight. I curl around a snoring Yuki, careful not to disturb her. She mutters something that might be Shinji and might not but try as I might I cannot will sleep to come. The nervousness licks at the back of my mind and I try to let Yuki's inhale-exhale lull me to a false calm. It works eventually, but as my eyes bolt open at 5:00 AM I can't help but feel the lingering effects of last night's conversation.

We could outwit the school easily now. But Kensuke's taken it one step further. We could outwit Section Two, maybe even the UN for some time. Not a lot but enough to do _something_. Enough to make a point. And perhaps the most unsettling thing is that this acceleration seems so natural, like we've set the snowball into motion on the slopes of Fuji-san and now all we have to do is sit back and let it roll. It's almost like I _wanted_ it to happen.

* * *

A/N: Hey lovelies. Just checkin' back in with my baby. My other baby. Okay, maybe red-headded stepchild. Where is this all going? Eh, I have about as much of a clue as Shinji. More or less. Probably more, but you know how it is. This story is retardedly easy to write. Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating with it considering how much trouble I have with each new Secrecy chapter. Speaking of which, my two favorite chapters of the book just got released this past week or so. So really, what are you waiting for? Whips? I HAVE THEM! 

So, uh.. er... Oh yeah.

Asarenshu, or its abreviated form Asaren, just means morning practice by the way, in case that threw any of you for a loop. I think I was explicit enough to make the Japanese bearable. The new chapter should roll in whenever it meanders into my head. Usually in the form of strange, vaguely Eva-related dreams. Like this one. Ja ne!


	6. I'm branded

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

"_I live in a town_

_Where you can't smell a thing_

_You watch your feet_

_For cracks in the pavement_

_High up above_

_Aliens hover_

_Making home movies_

_For the folks back home_

_Of all these weird creatures_

_Who lock up their spirits_

_Drill holes in themselves_

_And live for their secrets_

_They're all_

_Uptight, uptight"_

_--Radiohead, Subterranean Homesick Alien_

The growl of the little machine vibrates through the acoustics of the tiny shop, ringing in my ears. I look over at Touji with a grimace; he gives me a similar expression and a thumbs up with his real arm. The man jerks the needle away.

"Warn me when you're going to do that, idiot!" he grumbles.

Touji shrinks into the chair, careful not to shift around this time.

"Fucking kids," the man mutters.

"Alright, the outline is done," says the artist over my own shoulder. "I'm gonna give it a minute while I go get the mirror for you. What colors did you say you wanted?"

"Blood. Blood red and… auburn."

"Right." He shrugs and goes off to get the mirror.

* * *

**Sixth Revolution: I'm branded a coward.**

* * *

"This is just… very unusual, Ikari-san."

"I understand your concerns but I've already spoken with the gym managers and the referees—they're all available on Saturday as well," I reply into the receiver while Kazu smirks at me from across the couch.

"Normally we don't take _random_ challenges, you see…" he says, still hesitating. The way he says random makes my false smile evaporate. I'm glad this conversation is not over a videophone.

"If he wants to refuse, he can do so personally. I've been very respectful of the club this far," I muster.

"Is… this what your Asaren competition is all about?" he asks meekly enough but the tone insinuates something else.

"Competition?" I laugh, infuriated and hiding it. Kazu cocks one eyebrow up at me, noticing the flap of self-control peel away a little. "You… no, never mind. We're very flattered to think the Kendo Club would assume we're competing with them. But I think I've made it clear enough this is a personal 'challenge' as you've phrased it. I'll be looking forward to Kurokawa's answer." I hang up before he can reply.

"Fucking…" I begin and then exhale the rest of the way, letting it go.

"It's all one big fucking mind game. They wouldn't have led you around by the lip this far if he didn't want the match. He's just psyching you out."

"Yeah, you're right. But still, they're really being…" I search for the right word.

"Pricks?"

"Yeah."

"That's because he's afraid of you, Shinji," Kazu resolves.

I toss Kazu a disbelieving look. But something between our gaze registers and my wall of unbridled confidence over takes my reserves of humility. Shinji Ikari has become a frightening, unpredictable thing. And I can live with that.

* * *

"This is Asuka Langley Souryu. I can't come to the phone right now—I have important things to attend to. But if you could state your name, number, and purpose for calling I'll be sure and listen to your message." 

It doesn't mention anything about getting back to you, though. Typical.

"Thanks, bye."

It beeps.

"Hello, Asuka." My voice does not tremble. I've imagined this call in all its variations but no fantasies quite compare to the real thing. Or the way I've come to see things. "I won't presume to apologize to you—I already know what your answer is to that and I've accepted it. I know you can't forgive me. All I'm asking is that I can speak with you again. Just to talk. You chose the topic, you chose the time. If…" I cover the sigh. "If you don't reply, I'll understand. I'll stop bothering you. In fact, I won't say another word to you. I'll pretend you're some one I don't know just the way you've been doing with me. If that's what you want, it's fine. But if you're sick of this—if you would like some kind of… truce, talk to me. Otherwise, well, I guess it was nice to know you, Asuka."

I close the cover with a click and watch the time counter blink at me above the little AU logo. In fifty-three seconds I have paved the way for a reconciliation of epic proportions. It seems absurdly easy; how could I have waited this long, I wonder.

* * *

"Hello, beautiful," she says as she walks through the door. I smile back at her. 

"Hello. Dinner's almost done."

She inhales deeply through her nose, shutting her eyes.

"Mmm. God, that smells wonderful, Shin. I didn't know anyone could make tofu smell like that!" she exclaims, delight filling her features.

She plops down next to me, and leans in to kiss me once. Our lips part and she puts her arms around me. Luckily Kazu will be off with a female companion tonight. The house is ours.

"I got us a movie to watch for your match tomorrow."

"It's not a match," I respond with the same mantra I've had to use with everyone else. "Just, friendly competition is all. Nothing more."

She takes my chin between her fingers and leans over as if to kiss me again. "That doesn't mean I can't want to you to win," she says almost too serious. My grin curves under her grip.

"Point. So, what'd ya get? Yojimbo?" I ask hopefully. I've always been a slight Kurosawa buff.

"It's more realistic than that," she says, playfully shoving me. "Now go get us some bowls, my stomach feels like it's going to start eating itself."

I chuckle and duck into the kitchen, calling out guesses between pouring out our miso and putting the finishing touches on other dishes.

"And it's not 'The Last Samurai' either, is it?" I say as I finish preparing.

"Way cold! Not to mention those guys were slaughtered—not exactly what we're hoping for right? And don't even get me started on Tom Cruise."

"Still badass," I mumble under my breath but not loud enough that she can hear.

I return with a tray in either hand. I nearly drop them as I glance at the DVD menu. Half a red leaf with curling English text greets my startled face. Pachabel tinkles lightly in the background over my horror.

"Shinji?" she says, noticing my stark expression. She bolts to a stand and grabs the trays out of my stunned hands. I keep stiff as a statue as she glides them onto the coffee table. She puts a hand on each shoulder, shaking me gently.

"Shinji?" she asks again, slightly more concerned now. Reluctantly my eyes leave the screen and return to hers.

"This… Yuki, this was a bad idea," I manage through a suddenly dry throat.

"You don't want to watch it with me?" she asks, lips trembling. Her expression is so totally… _hurt_.

"I don't want to watch that with anyone, Yuki. And you don't… you don't want to see…" I mumble, as confusing and painful memories waltz into my head and gyrate around my conversational ability.

"See what?" See what, Shinji?" she says firmly.

"The Shinji Ikari of those days," I finish for her. Not that the documentary will show any of that. But my reaction to it will be a dead giveaway.

"Oh." Her face cracks to pieces, a bitter smile appearing where it should not be. Is she angry? At me? "So you'd rather hide from me? You'd just go on pretending, then?" she says, sweeping her hands away and off of me. Finally I am making Yuki Ikeda cry again.

"It's better this way, Yuki. Haven't things been good?" I plead with her.

"Oh yeah," she says, as the tears break away. "Real fucking great now, aren't they?" Her eyes glare at me beneath the wetness, mocking my tone of voice.

"Yuki…" I say, placating.

"Besides, why would I ever want to know anything about my boyfriend?"

She looks away, arms crossed as her chest hitches again with another whimpering sob.

"Yuki—"

"Yes, he does such a good job of hiding it from everyone else, why would _I_ ever care who he _really_ is." She's really sobbing now, curling tighter and tighter onto her stomach with every word.

"Yuki!" She doesn't look up.

"His friends can know. But Yuki, she's _just his girlfriend_._ She's just there to have sex with!_" she shrieks. And all of the weeping fury leaves her in an instant. She folds onto her knees, still clutching herself. But the tears are softer now. Weaker.

"Touji and Kensuke are different—"

"They are aren't they?" she says, looking up at me with a face of total comprehension. "Because you _trust_ them."

I kneel down beside her and slowly, gently pull her into a hug. My face is resigned as she gives into my warmth and leans her head onto my shoulder. She wipes her eyes slowly.

"If I tell you—tell you everything… you'll never see me as the same person again," I warn her quietly.

"I know," she replies. "I'll see the real you."

"Is that worth it?"

"It's worth everything."

So I tell her. Before I'm finished, I'll have made Yuki cry for the second time today. And I'll have joined her.

* * *

"What do you think?" 

Its triple points glisten on the raw skin, some of my own blood occasionally mixing into the unusual colors I chose. It cuts across my shoulder blade at a diagonal, the base aimed at my bottom left rib, the twin tips aimed up into the air.

"Perfect," I whisper, mesmerized by the sight of it pressing into my flesh. It's beautiful and horrible in the same; another perfect paradox for my mind to mull over. Start with the symbolic pains and work your way back to the real ones; if you can get two in one go—well then you're cooking with fire.

"Yeah, I've done some unusual stuff in my time. Nothing quite like _that_ though, I have to admit," the man speaks, grudgingly impressed. "Places like mine are disappearing. Nobody wants the pain of the needle if they can avoid it and the new skin procedures have gotten pretty advanced in the last decade. We're a dying breed, you and I."

I don't have answers to his wistful speech, my eyes never leaving the odd shapes.

"If you don't mind… why'd you get it?" he asks me.

"To remind me of something very… very awful that I did to a friend once. It's a reminder to never do it again."

Touji, Kensuke, and Kazu all nod just barely from the ring they've made in front of me. They won't ask me to say any more of it just as I won't ask them to say anymore of theirs. We all agreed on the criteria beforehand.

"Ah," he says it last. "I wouldn't have figured that. But it makes sense, seeing as you came to my place. We're one of the last shops around here to keep doing it the old way. That's actually why most people come in here nowadays. Like the pain is a right of passage or something. Seems more real that way, doesn't it?"

"Yes," I answer hazily. "Pain is something you cannot avoid forever. Not without making it worse."

I touch the colored flesh, marveling at how my fingers feel like nothing more than soft lightness over the dull, throbbing ache of the shoulder blade.

* * *

We come dressed in identical black uniforms, saying nothing as we enter. I ignore the shock of the filled and hushed stands—students have arrived in the thousands. All four classes, all different cliques and clubs. The bleachers look almost as full as Touji's opening night on the court. I had not expected such a reception. 

Their eyes track us silently as we hover to a halt at the opposite free throw mark. Across from us sits a legion of identical black uniforms, at least thirty or more. I cannot make out Kurokawa's bulk from the group of cloth shadows. Our sashes are red, theirs a pristine white. Other than that we appear identical. The three of them take up their places behind me as I approach the center of the taped out square.

Another shape makes its way from the uniforms assembled across; underneath the screen, the telltale features of Iyori's face materialize. He's a fourth year—it's practically insulting for me to even be attempting such a match. But this is off the record and thanks to his enthusiasm to beat me; the club has allowed it. He's the leader, so in some sense he has all the authority, an almost inverse of our own SEELE. We're more like the MAGI; we make decisions bound by unanimity but no one has more pull than anyone else.

Applause thunders as we take our places across from each other; a few of his members shout "sempai!" but I ignore them. The refs make the ready call. We squat from across each other swords pointed at one another, signifying that we're prepared and the roar of the Keio student body falls into an even deeper silence than my entry provoked. Now his pride is on the line. I have the advantage—I have nothing to lose by failing today. He has his entire reputation.

I watch dreamily as the black shapes curving away from his helmet morph, becoming one with his shoulders. The wings sprout, their darkness facing me, their white sides facing away. Iyori's face, behind the screen, elongates into the mesh, curling to something new. The snout of something grows in its place as his eyes fold into his forehead. The jaw stretches, turning up with a curl of startling contempt. Its grin makes my stomach churn; I know this eyeless, face. I know this false God. Its silky white curves, its grimace revealing red lips and hexagonal teeth. Its lolling, sickly tongue; it is an animal masquerading in the clothing of a God. An Abomination.

My fury swells, boiling further and further as the anxious moments for the flags to drop tick closer with maddening slowness. Its wings have spread fully on either side, stretching to a tiny pyramid behind its hunched back. Its bamboo shinai has turned to a heavy, vicious looking double-edged sword twice my height—gleaming gray death on both edges. It slobbers hungrily, anticipating the slaughter and laughing a greedy chuckle in its inhuman baritone.

I lick my lips nearly as eagerly. I can feel the destruction thrumming into my hands after the flag falls. The roar of my charge meets my ears as I dash with the start but it is no voice of my own; this is another Shinji Ikari of my mind, one I had forgotten for a very long, long time. The Shinji Ikari of Zeruel's conquering. The Shinji Ikari who avenged Asuka. Bloodthirsty—brutal—rage and violence personified. I will make the very mountains weep.

Iyori never saw it coming.

The match lasts seven minutes. I get both flags. I bow my head to screaming, shocked applause and a standing ovation. They know now. To those who aren't here, the word will spread quickly: Shinji Ikari is a monster in man's clothing. Iyori returns my bow, his shame concealed behind the mesh of his helmet. We exit with a full bow to the obliging crowd from the four of us; none of them says a word as we depart. They all expected this outcome. We are new things in the guise of our former selves and as we approach the exit on our side of the massive gym, I have the sudden elating sense that there is nothing I cannot accomplish given time and dedication.

* * *

A/N: Is there such a thing as updating too quickly? This idea came to me on the spur of the moment. Really the only hard part was chosing the proper song for this arc, I took about two hours of browsing through my iTunes if you can believe. I was trying to get something to really nail the feel of these next chapters. I'm not sure if "arc" is the right terminology given the relatively small size of each piece, but I'll use it for now. 

I hope the chronology of this chapter wasn't too confusing. I was kind of bouncing back and forth in time but hopefully it made enough sense anyways.

If people would prefer me to slow down with the updating that won't be a problem. Let me know in a review or a PM.


	7. I'll paint the town red

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

It began in flowing red paint. It ended at four AM. It's a weekend, thank God, so I crawl back under the covers, Yuki's snores undisturbed save a murmur.

It was sooner than we expected. Planning came together quickly. The solution was obvious: do something big enough and permanent enough that people will notice. Nothing obnoxious. Nothing crude. Artistic maybe, and certainly rebellious but creative rather than destructive. It was a collective mandate on our part to set the conditions that way. Why not channel positive energy?

In a way, I'm strangely relieved. Our snowball on mount Fuji has not rolled in any unexpected directions. I grin as Yuki shifts against me. I feel safe, right, and complete.

It is in a way, like everything SEELE's become, some strange inside joke. Some of those jokes do not have the greatest of punchlines the tenderness in my shoulder reminds me. Yuki was kind of surprised by its appearance but I have no idea if she's connected the dots: I wasn't terribly specific by the time I got to Asuka.

Our trick will be puzzled over just as many of the bizarre events to sweep our campus that would follow. What had begun with the seven eyed "face" continues in a less obscure reference. What is the point? Well my friend, that's like asking the _point_ of a haiku. Whoever said there was a point to cicadas in the summertime, prayers in the evening, or the flow of water in a mountain stream? If you find him, give him a punch for me. Making a point, the very thing I was coming to dread, has become the inverse of our purpose. Why not leave something open to interpretation rather than that which demands one? I like this line of reasoning.

I glide into dreaming of Basho, sake, and the rock garden of a shrine a few blocks from campus.

* * *

Yuki shakes me awake thirty minutes before noon rolls through her windows. She seems excited but nervous. 

"Shinji, someone vandalized the first administrative building. Everyone is making a big fuss."

Vandalism, eh? That's one way of putting it.

"Oh?" I say in my best approximation of sleep-infused surprise. "That's interesting."

"It's not even a full month into classes!" she says, rubbing grit out of my eyes with a tender thumb. "This is going to be a crazy year." She sounds, I'm relieved to say, excited and not upset.

I nod not quite as fully as I want to; you have no idea, I think as I watch her.

"Let's go see it!"

"Come on, it's just some stupid prank," I say so easily I'm almost convinced of its triviality.

"So, it's Saturday and it's something to do," she retorts.

"Mmm," I don't quite answer and pull her nakedness closer to me. She giggles another wonderful marvel of noise as she finds my lips.

"You are so fun to wake up next to," she whispers, dowsing me in dark bangs as she pulls herself on top of me.

I smile sheepishly. "Which part are you talking about?"

Her eyes widen, grin spilling forth. "Shut up and earn your Saturday off," she pretends to command.

I earn my Saturday.

* * *

The paint is painfully red. The kanji looks like it was done by a calligrapher with a brush the size of a school bus. Our methodical practice rewards my hidden pride. It does not look like four carefully coordinated parts. It does not look, in truth possible for a team of twenty. The darkness of last night had only fulfilled the vagaries of its awesome sight in dwindling moonlight. Now in the midday sun, surrounded by crowds of awestruck students, it gleams. 

For all its rash lines, the "vandalism" looks purposeful. No windows are painted over. And the kanji all fit within the face of the building aimed towards the main gate. It could have almost looked to be placed there on purpose except that it clashes mightily with the otherwise muted tones of campus. We made sure we didn't _too_ good a job of making it coexist with its surroundings.

Students talk excitedly to one another and joke loudly. The few faculty that happen to be around shake their heads without quite wiping the admiration fully from their features; it may be a prank, the administration may be in an uproar, but there is an undeniable beauty to the strokes; their curves are seductive. This was not a work born out of anger, they can tell, but rather love. No graffiti the campus would come to expect bears an equality of feeling to _our_ work.

And the quotation is too Zen to be put there by just _anyone_. Whoever pulled this off, I imagine them pondering, had to have been well educated, careful, and not particularly concerned about "settling a score."

The inscription is one we find fitting of our status as college students. We're on the brink of real life, teetering perilously close to its edge. Though they may attempt to box and harness our creativity, the impermanence of this place in our lives is etched into our very soul. Keio cannot suck that from us. The disturbingly right-wingish government certainly can't. Let this be a reminder to all those who would say "not allowed" or "the world doesn't work that way." Naivete is more than a state of mind: it's a lifestyle.

"Fisherman by a rocky shore, wind blowing wildly in a boat unmoored—such is our condition," she whispers to herself beside me.

Yes it's fucking poetry. And for anyone that's lost on, let them enjoy it in their ignorance. Let them assume it was born out of vengeance. Those among us who can understand its significance—well it be their day in the sun for once. Something that not even the tightfisted administration can squeeze and package into their schemes. Chaos, beauty, impermanence. I imagine the monk might not be too disappointed to see us reference him like this.

As for Yuki hanging on my arm—well, she's spellbound. Her eyes trace each painstaking stroke in all its careful glory.

"This, Shinji, this is... this is _weird_," she says after minutes of awed silence. It does not sound like an insult.

I squeeze her arm once but don't dare to let myself speak as the energy of the moment churns inside me. For now I'm content to enjoy the look in her searching eyes, delighted, innocent: Yuki is transformed into a child before me, serene and lost in our creation. I could not have hoped for anything more.

* * *

**Seventh Revolution: I'll paint the town red.**

* * *

**  
**"Hikari was fuming. If you had seen the look on her face..." Touji bemoans to us. 

"She was never really 'fuck the system,' Touj'," Kensuke reminds gently behind Kazu's stifled laughter.

I take a swig of the Asahi Super Dry, enjoying the cold tingle it leaves behind in my mouth. It's not even five o'clock but celebrations are celebrations. And sake seemed a little overboard.

"Yuki was enamored," I proclaim victorious.

Kazu's raises his fist, triumphant and lets out a hoot.

"Damn," Kensuke mutters, fumbling for his wallet. He hands over a ten to Kazu.

"You need to work on your gambling addiction..." I admonish unseriously.

"Well it's not like there was anyone else worth betting on," he begins and then crumples the black on silver label in his hand and tosses it into the cardboard box. "Still..."

He smiles the smile we've all been wearing for the last few hours.

Kazu catches the expression and mimes it. "Yeah... totally worth it."

It was a week of painfully detailed planning. We bought the paint and brushes through a combination of our three shadow members' credit cards as well as the abseiling equipment. Keio doesn't have any security cameras to speak of and I carefully analyzed the Section Two agreement with the school about what they could and couldn't look at within the premises. That was the real hair-raising bit—not that NERV would be particularly interested in catching the culprits—just that Misato might give me a stern talking to in private. I was her personal Kaji in his lieu and puberty had not earned me _any_ slack. But apparently the campus maintains its privacy quite well in the face of the strongest paramilitary on Earth. Good for them. I was never a fan of Big Brother myself.

"You know what this means about whatever we do next," Touji says.

I gulp. "Bigger of course. Riskier."

"Definitely riskier," Kazu repeats.

"I like the style though. Very chic, very... ambiguous," Kensuke muses over steepled fingers.

"Let's take it easy for a while and make sure they aren't already building a case," I say quickly. Touji and I would probably have to have affairs with several administrators' wives before they'd willingly let us go. Kensuke and Kazu on the other hand do not share the safety net of marketing esteem. That leaves me cynical for a breath or two before I let it go all over again.

"Anyone approach you guys?" Kazu says into the aluminum can.

"Nope. Not so much as a peep," Kensuke replies.

"Me neither," I add.

"Hikari..." Touji mutters. We laugh.

"Well I don't think she was being entirely serious," he defends.

"Opposites and their inevitable attractions—could be a Discovery channel documentary," Kazu jokes, making an imaginary camera with indexes and thumbs.

Not always inevitable, I think angrily. Sometimes opposites have a really good time of exploding when you push them too close together.

My AU vibrates in the jeans pocket. I ignore it.

"Well, other than 'class rep' looks like we got off without so much as a whiff of acrylic on us," I say a little too wearily but, if they notice they say nothing.

A knock at the door sends us spinning glances off one another. Surely not. Surely the universe is not so poetically cruel. The insistent vibrations of my cell phone send a shiver up my spine beyond my self-control. The three heavy rasps against the wood come again, louder.

I bolt to the door but don't unlock it.

"Who is it?" I say evenly but my tongue feels sluggish under all the adrenaline wetting the back of my mouth.

"Who the fuck do you think it is?" someone says angry and muffled behind the door.

I exhale as the tension drains and pop open the door to the grinning faces of two juniors from down the hall: Jun and Gyuu-kun.

"Fuckers," Jun laughs throatily as I wave them in. The others laugh from their spots on the couch.

"I knew I smelled beer," Gyuu says, winking at me as he steps by.

"How's your circlejerk coming along?" Jun asks, leaning against the wall opposite the couch.

"Just fine thanks. Maybe you could give me a hand though?" Touji says, raising the prosthetic in the junior's direction.

The false anger evaporates into howling laughter from all six of us. Mine, I discover to my surprise, is not the strained and nervous kind I'm used to giving for Touji's off-color jokes. Slowly, I think as I rejoin the group, slowly things are getting better.

"You hear about the shit that happened to administration last night?" Gyuu asks, after I wave him towards our stack of beer. He pops the tab taking a careful sip.

"Yeah, I saw it today. My girlfriend was none too pleased," Touji replies for us.

"Hoo boy, I can imagine _that_," Jun says, elevating his gaze towards the ceiling. "Pretty cool though, whoever did it."

"Yeah," Gyuu says, sloshing his beer in a slow circle. "I swear I've heard that quotation before in high school somewhere."

"Me too," I say with an absolute lack of conviction. We will keep treading very lightly for now.

"What are you guys doing starting so early in the day?" Jun inquires, quietly forgetting his own opened Asahi.

My phone jiggles again cutting off my premature answer.

"Eh, it's Saturday. You know..." Kensuke lies.

"Nothing better to do," Kazu adds.

I fumble with the phone, considering turning it off.

"When are you going to show off all those nudie photos anyways, perv?" Jun jibes with an eager grin.

"They aren't pornography," Kensuke says, crossing his arms and ignoring the disbelieving snort. "And the show is happening in the city two weeks from now."

My finger hovers over the off button.

"And it's wine and cheese so don't try and get in unless you have a suit on," Kensuke says, sticking his tongue out.

"Whatever you say, maestro," Jun replies, rolling his eyes.

"Now if only I could get Yuki..." Kensuke schemes, a dirty old man's grin aimed in my direction.

"Don't look at me. It's her body, she can do whatever she wants with it," I say, putting up my hands to evade any further prodding.

"You're down with that?" Gyuu asks, stupefied.

"They _are_ tasteful, despite wherever Jun's mind is stuck," Kensuke chides before I can answer. Jun barks a laugh behind his can.

Slowly I retrieve the phone vibrating with annoying firmness.

Misato's name blinks at me from the faceplate as I hit talk.

"Shinji," she says as I put the phone to my ear. She's crying. She's really, really crying like I haven't heard since a long time ago. It turns my tongue to ice. Something twists in my stomach as she tries to get control of the sobs. I dart to the kitchen before any of them can ask me about the strange face I'm making.

"Misato. Misato! What's wrong!" I whisper as urgently as I can dare. There's no door to our kitchen.

"No, it's not—nothing is—I mean..."

"Misato, why are you—"

"It's Kaji, Shinji."

Oh. Shit. Oh, _shit_.

"He's—he's back. They found him a few hours ago. He's _alive_, Shinji."

And suddenly I hear the overwhelming joy behind the tears. The sort of unbridled joy I've missed hearing so much from her.

"I want you, want both of you to come by and see him as soon as you can... I mean, if you want to."

"Of course. Of course I want to."

"A VTOL will be at Futarita in an hour. Is that too soon?"

"Not at all."

"Good. I have to go now, I'm in a bit of a hurry. I'll be there when you arrive."

"Okay."

"Shinji... he'll be really happy to see you, I'm sure. I will too, you know."

"I know, Misato. I... I lo..." The words stick inside my throat, refusing to come. "I'll see you soon."

"Bye." The line clicks.

One step at a time, Ikari. One step at a time.

* * *

A/N: This took me a little longer than I expected. Life threw me some curveballs and a friend of mine ended up in a very serious situation. Workload from school exploded pretty easily. The movie is requiring my careful attention. Chapter thirteen on Secrecy is turning out to be hard because I want it perfect and you know how that is. Anyways, this had been swimming around my head for a little while. Then it kind of went off on its own the way things tend to do. Anyways, I like how it came out. Hope you do too. Thanks for all the lovely reviews and encouragement. There's one question I have a definitive answer to. Updating fast is very acceptable. Love appreciated. Have a stellar week. 


	8. We're done with the old games

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

Futarita airport is twenty minutes from the train station closest to Keio. I'm unable to make much more than sudden apologies and a swift exit from my dorm. I phone Yuki on the way and tell her I may be out of down for a day or two much to her disappointment. I don't have to drop much more than NERV and let my voice twinge back to the longest conversation we've ever had; she gets the picture pretty quickly.

The subway is not crowded, which is to say it's jam-packed because when I transfer onto the line headed to Futarita I still feel up to my eyeballs in people. Some stare. Others whisper, though the miracle of Japanese public conduct stops anyone from being any more overt. The white lines of my ear buds are enough to keep people away. A high school girl sitting across from me looks like she may will herself into a tomato before she finally gets up and finds another car. A teary-eyed office lady comes the closest to losing it, clutching my hand suddenly and mouthing "arigatou" before departing at a run. That sends a tremor through the Section Two lei lines spread through my car. And a shiver up my own spine. Nothing in the world prepares you for such unexpected sincerity from strangers, no matter how many times it happens.

As we get closer to Futarita most of the local travelers are weeded out, leaving the ever-ignorant foreigner population that probably can't tell any difference between me and every other kid my age. The dark hoodie and beanie pulled to my eyebrow do their best to hide me otherwise which seems to produce mixed results—somehow I've avoided shaving for long enough that it's almost a worthy disguise.

Section Twos have shifted away now that the crowds are mostly dispersed and do their best to remain out of sight in the cars adjacent to mine, their huge builds and black suits occasionally swerving into my vision on a particularly steep turn. It is only unnerving in the faintest of ways. But this is the life I got used to living. It is, to be fair, the life I chose when I let Misato publicize whatever NERV could sanction as appropriate footage of the three of us. When the world had their first hero and heroine.

Finally we pull up to the end of the line, much to their credit, I hardly notice the two sunglassed glances flicker in my direction as I step off the train. Four shadows spread out into the offloading passengers behind me and I do my best to remain inconspicuous as I step onto the escalator. Everyone seems too excited about their vacation's start or too tired about their vacation's finish to notice me; bagless, I evaporate into the Asian faces as a slightly tall student with not much more than his iPod on his mind.

As we reach the top of the escalator and the main concourse a huge hand lands firmly on my shoulder, and much to my credit I do not so much as blink.

"Please come with us, Mr. Ikari," says the husky voice. I know the routine.

"Of course," I reply, shrugging off his grasp not too ungratefully.

Two of them whisper inaudibly, fingers pressed to one ear. The six suits surround me in formation and I follow their lead, ignoring the twin bulges on either hip of their dark suits. And that's when the real circus starts, because finally people realize that there must be something worth looking at when six six-foot-plus men wearing identical black suits and sunglasses with identical buzzcuts are shuffling a college student through the airport.

"Shinji!" someone shouts, a female voice that sounds too old to say my name that way. And the commotion is instant. People push tightly towards us, camera phones waving over the excited faces like so many stalks of metallic corn; their lenses are little black eyes, all clicking desperately for an upturn in my expression. The Section Twos tense without quite looking like it and pick up the pace only barely. Then airport security is pushing the anxious, excited faces away and the shouting and screaming doesn't seem so constricting.

I had forgotten what celebrity really was at Keio; at least there people eventually got over it, seeing you ever day. Out in the real world, I'm a goddamn commodity. To be put on coffee mugs, tabloid magazines, and toothbrushes. Does Taro have the matching Unit-01 lunchbox? Little Miho is dressing up as Commander Katsuragi this Halloween!

You should see the size of the NERV legal department, created just for defending the copyrights of our faces and organization—they've got the security and defense budget on the run these days. But all the Shinji in the world never seems to satisfy. They clap. They cry. And my God, are they ever loud. I circle my thumb around the iPod in my hoodie's kangaroo pocket.

Thankfully they whisk me into a corridor built into what looked like a solid part of the wall and the noise drains to nothing. I pop the headphones out from behind the hat.

"Clear and on the way," another husky voice whispers behind me.

"Real fucking smooth, I could have got here with just one of you bozos leading and we could have skipped all that nonsense," I growl uncharacteristically.

I think it's the first time I've ever said anything like that to Section Two. A man beside me turns the black lenses of his Raybans my direction and gives his best impression of a smile—which isn't saying much.

"Commander's orders," he explains.

"Yeah well, in case you've forgotten, I'm on the payroll too. And based on our reorganization, that also makes me your superior officer, doesn't it?"

One of them adjusts his tie. Another coughs.

"Yes, sir," the one in front says finally.

"Good."

That was so fucking Gendo Ikari but damn if it didn't feel good. Power trips must be a hereditary thing.

"How much longer until my flight?"

"The plane is awaiting your arrival, sir."

"And the Second Child?"

"Already there, sir."

"Right…"

Of course she'd be early. She won't complain about me being late the way she might have a lifetime ago. We've both gotten far too subtle and nasty to bother with such things.

I sigh through my nose and for once I'm totally thankful for the Section Twos' unreadable professionalism.

* * *

**Eighth Revolution: We're done with the old games—our new ones hurt much more.**

* * *

The VTOL feels submarine in size and the claustrophobic interior doesn't help. The six men follow us on and take their seats in their own cabin, leaving us to a private one in the back with four seats divided by a single aisle. Asuka scoots into the right corner and I take the diagonal on the left, sensing her unease. We both look out the windows wordlessly.

The engines begin their startup hum almost as soon as we sit down and I notice five other identical transports out my window, all armed to the teeth. We all raise simultaneously off the tarmac and when we reach some predetermined height, we weave about one another like a magician has made us the nut under the plastic cup. When they're satisfied that no one has any idea which transport holds us two, the vertical thrusters shift into a more angular stance and I feel the acceleration push me into my seat.

A stewardess, who looks like some Rambo-fied version of your JAL standard brings me a green tea and her a tonic water and I can't help but chuckle at the firearm holstered next to the conservative skirt of the outfit. The steward smiles an empty, meaningless smile she's perfected for just such an occasion and informs us that she'd be happy to do anything to make our flight more comfortable; the way her hips swivel when she leaves the cabin leaves me no doubt of how far that conviction would go if I was on this flight alone.

But the amusement is momentary, and when the emptiness of the cabin resumes the silence aches. I'm so fucking tired of this. So, to hell with it.

"Did you get my message—"

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Maybe not," I say, sipping at the tea. "But I might have something to say to you."

One blue glares at me from under the red bangs, the first time she's looked at me the whole flight. Her face is still the beautiful thing I remember, now sullied with an unfamiliarity and a stranger's expression that hurts more than many of the things she's ever said to me. It's a face that looks bored, bitter, but mostly detached; a face I dreaded long ago but never dreamed I'd help to foster.

"I don't want to go on like this. Not speaking to each other…"

She snorts and looks away.

"It may be fine for you, but…" My throat constricts. A hardness finds its way into my Adam's apple and I suddenly have the horrible sense of déjà vu that I'm confronting my father all over again. And losing.

"But I can't go on living this way."

Her eyes sneak towards my downturned face, though I cannot see what the look holds with my peripheral vision.

She sips at her tonic water and I wonder if the conversation has already ended.

"We can't have _that_ anymore, Shinji," she says quietly. "We threw it away a long time ago."

"That doesn't mean we can't treat each other like human beings," I mumble as tears blur the edge of the teacup.

"The _least_ you can do for me, Shinji, is respect my wish. Is that so fucking much to ask for?" The ancient venom laces the words easily. But I resist its unfair sting. I restrain my voice as much as I possibly can:

"That's the _only_ thing I've _ever_ done, Asuka."

"Don't push me, _Third_. No one tells me what to do. Certainly not you or your stupid fucking 'peace offer'." She laughs suddenly at a joke that only she can hear. "You think just because that _slut_ you're seeing has helped you grow a spine that you can treat me like nothing ever happened? Pathetic."

"I wonder what Kaji will think, seeing what you've become," I let the salvo go off with no hesitation. Regret fills my breath as my lips close and I see her reach a hand up to her eye socket.

No, I think. That's not what I meant—that's not what I meant at all. I watch the hand tremble, stirring the red bangs, then find the armrest again. But now it's too late. It doesn't matter what I did or didn't mean, I said it to hurt her and I got exactly what I wanted. And what I really hate—what I absolutely despise is the part of me that feels satisfied.

Mission fucking accomplished. You prick.

* * *

Despite Misato's deep disappointment, Asuka quietly asks to see Kaji without me in the room. She also asks for a separate flight home, and when Misato protests, she resolves to buy the ticket herself which folds any further determination from their guardian.

Misato and I sit across from each other at the cafeteria, ignoring lingering eyes of NERV personnel and wait for Asuka to finish talking to him.

"Tell me about school. Tell me about everything!" she says excitedly, squeezing my hands in hers. I still blush at the contact but she doesn't feel the need to tease me for it if she sees.

"Things have been really good," I say. I can't imagine sounding more unconvinced.

"Shinji…" She rubs a hand down one stubbled cheek. "Are you sure? You sound…"

"I know. I'm sorry. Asuka and I had a fight on the way over," I mutter and stir at the applesauce.

She bites her lip. "I was wondering if that was why she wanted the distance… do you, do you want to talk about it?"

I look up startled to find her gaze strikingly parental. It's at this moment I realize that she really has missed me from all my time away at school. It must have been hard working as she does with no one to come home to. But maybe Kaji can change all that.

"It's my fault. I started it."

"How?"

"By talking to her."

She laughs and runs her fingers through my hair.

"You two…" she says, a grin spreading as she looks away and into somewhere in her own past.

"What?"

"You just remind me so much of… us."

Which jolts me out of my seat.

"Whaaaat!?" I exclaim, nearly standing up. "Misato, Asuka and I are nothing—"

"Trust me, Kaji and I were like that once too. You saw the tail end of a decade-long fight on Over the Rainbow, just the rain after the storm." She cradles her cheeks in her hands. "People have a way of doing that, Shinji. Driving others away, that is."

She stares at me a little too intensely so I "hmm" to myself don't try and keep the topic any more alive than that.

"So, got any girlfriends? Are they cute?"

"Umm…" This time I must blush because she giggles.

"She _is_ cute! What's her name?"

"Yuki."

She bops me good-naturedly on the shoulder.

"Well I just hope you're using protection—"

"Misato!" She has always had her finger on my exasperation button.

She pounds the table with her laughter and cackles away at my bright red face. She dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief when she's finally had enough fun at my expense.

"Ah, they grow up so fast," she says to herself and perhaps some deity she's looking up at.

A white lab coat chooses that moment to inform us that Asuka has just left and we're free to see him with the careful reminders not to tire him out.

As we walk back to the ward, I see her demeanor turn serious.

"Shinji, there's something we have to discuss," she says when we're alone in the elevator together. "It's about Kaji."

"Okay," I say numbly.

She crosses her arms and as I look up at her watching the floors tick off I know we've entered new territory. NERV territory.

"Kaji hasn't been in hiding for the past couple years just for the hell of it. He's been on the run, Shinji. As it turns out he's one of the Japanese government's 'loose ends' when it comes to Evangelion and NERV." I see the face that butchered JSSDF men flicker through her expression when she says "loose ends." "He's been carefully working his way back to us ever since the Angels were defeated. Lots of people though, Shinji, would rather not have the Ryouji Kajis of the world around to tell people just what the Japanese government did and did not know about our nation's relationship to SEELE. Current members of the Diet, the Prime Minister, and several other organizations I can't even tell you about are very, very afraid of Kaji."

"I see," I say softly.

"Don't worry, Shinji, he's very safe with us. But if Kaji ever wants to lead a normal life—well… Shinji, what I'm saying is, what I'd like—what we'd both like is to have Kaji also be your legal guardian, Shinji. That way…"

I nod immediately.

"Of course. Of course, Misato. I wouldn't…" I wouldn't let him be taken from you a second time. Never again.

"Thank you, Shinji. I knew you'd understand." She hugs me tightly as the door dings open on Kaji's floor.

We walk into the room to see his goofy grin and the flashback strikes me with lighting quickness.

Everything is pale shades of midday light. An EKG beeps somewhere beside me with metronome precision as graphs and readouts on the wall bounce in time. I'm in room 303, begging her limp form to wake up. Like I've done every day since the surgeries. And when she finally does, when the azure eye stares up at me behind the bandages, I lose it completely. I start to bawl, to pull her closer. She shoves me away with surprising strength and utters the words I will never forget:

"You disgust me."

I don't know how but the hands find her tiny throat all by a will of their own. And crush. And crush. And crush. Then the grip of a huge orderly is carrying me away from the wincing, shocked face. And all the things that will never be the same again.

"Is everything, okay, Shinji?" Kaji says from his propped up pillow.

"Yeah," I lie. Because I'm already taking after my Dad to be.

He smiles. "Haven't forgotten about those melons, I see."

* * *

A/N: Hello, hello. Haven't forgotten about you guys. Shinji's alive and well in my twisted head. I wrote this in about two hours so if there is any glaringly obvious mistake (there's always one) forgive me. This chapter turned way darker than I had originally intended but I wanted to delve back into the past without quite tying up all my loose ends yet. I guess it turns out the past can suck. I hope their conversation wasn't too short, but I think I did a fair job of explaining why and at the same time giving a chance to see their development. Something I intend to remind you guys time and again is that we can only see Shinji's interpretation of the enigma that is ShinjixAsuka and hence, may leave a lot of room for what's going on in Asuka's head. I trust that if you think like her with what I've given you, it should feel real and make sense. Anyways, looking forward to your comments and crits. Take it easy. 


	9. I've got nothing

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

The blinds are up letting the greens and blues of decommissioned Tokyo-3 bleed their colors onto the pale shade of the room. The N2 crater has filled up nicely and the Geofront paints us a dwindling sun on an early winter's afternoon, doing its best to pretend it's real sunlight. Misato leaves us to catch up with a careful glance over her shoulder that tells me more about what was on that answering machine than I'd ever heard before.

Love in those eyes. The same kind I could detect when she'd look at me in the right light.

Kaji's eyes trace over the horizon and I sit at the end of his bed doing largely the same.

"Misato told me things between you and Asuka aren't so… good."

A crow stirs the branches for us.

I chose my words carefully. "Bad. Yeah… Bad."

I notice him studying me out of the corner of my eye. He must decide by the face I make to move things to safer territory.

"You've both really grown up. She's turning into a spitting image of her mother. And you—"

"Please don't say what I think you're going to say."

He smiles softly.

"I was actually going to say you look a lot like your mother too. Or at least the pictures I remember seeing once."

"Pictures?" The bastard destroyed all our photographs. But my God, if the government was really investigating him… I'd never even thought…

"They'll still have them filed away somewhere, in some intelligentsia's desk. Nothing too flattering but I knew you'd want to see them. Misato's pulling all the right strings as we speak."

An achy thing I can only assume is hope slides over my skin, raising hairs on my neck and infecting me with its pain and nostalgia. The feeling is harshly foreign. Somewhere beside me my fist clenches and releases. To know for certain I can see her face again sends my nerves jittering on a strange wavelength not at all unpleasant; I'd always dreamed of stumbling onto some forgotten keepsake somewhere that father had left unburned—but never quite like this. For once the sheer tedium of Japanese bureaucracy and its record keeping is something I can praise.

"Thank you, Kaji," I whisper as my voice returns.

He glances over at the clipboard next to me that contains our mutual future. The forms were astonishingly thin, another sign the NERV legal team knows its business.

"And thank you. For signing that." Kaji nods in the papers' direction.

"It's no big deal. Besides, you're probably going to marry her anyways, aren't you?" I offer unabashed, matching his gaze abruptly.

Kaji's eyes widen just a fraction and he coughs as the response to my half-question sticks in his throat. When he's finished hacking over his surprise he chuckles at me. He runs a hand through the dark hair, closing his eyes.

"Shinji, I wouldn't have believed her if she'd told me this was what you'd be like." He does not make it sound as if that is an entirely bad thing. But like all ambiguous Kaji statements, it leaves me faintly nervous and curious.

"What I'd be like?" I repeat.

"So…"

"Direct?"

"Yes." The laughter again. "Direct, I suppose."

"Everyone grows up."

"How's that working out by the way?"

"Growing up?" I shrug. "Fine, I guess."

"You're taller. Got some muscle on ya. A little of my scruff too, I see."

I smile and stroke my chin. "I'm not copying you. Just being lazy."

"You never struck me as lazy," he replies quickly.

"Everyone grows up."

He grunts appreciatively. We study the view in silence once again.

"Misato explained the arrangement to me," he says to the glass. "How is being famous _in the right way_?"

"Your kind of famous the wrong way?"

"Something like that." He winks but I can see how serious he is. How serious Misato was in the elevator.

And suddenly the romantic image I've built up for Kaji all my life, the suave debonair façade crumbles to reveal a man living at the end of his wits, putting himself in the most dangerous of situations if only for Misato's benefit. He could have disappeared after the Angels; the post-Second Impact world left plenty of rabbit holes to find, away from prying eyes and wealthy governments. But he came back, looking for her and knowing it might be the death of him.

How anyone could ever choose to do what Kaji did for his day job is simply unbelievable to me; as far as I know I've never met anyone that would do it. And what kept him going—did he do it out of some sense of duty, or maybe a loyalty to Misato? Or maybe just some inhuman drive for the truth, some strange grain in Kaji's character that refused to let him be on the outside of the biggest caper pulled off in the history of mankind. Whatever drove him this far, edges of the fear he's lived under the past few years, the infinite and varying ways he could have died come rushing to the forefront in his hard eyes.

The classy lady's man I once envisioned I see now as nothing more than a byproduct of a life of deceit and death, a cat and mouse game played with my father, SEELE, and countless others perhaps. And I see the relief that it's finally coming to an end. I see that most of all. Slowly sweeping over the rest, leaving someone new in its wake.

"Hello, anyone home?" He waves a hand.

"Huh?"

"Being famous? I said what's it like being the star?"

"It's… it's okay. A little weird."

"I bet. I always thought pop stars must lead such different lives than us. Then one day I realized the only thing that makes their lives so different is that everyone thinks that about them and treats them accordingly."

"Yeah, I'd say that about sums it up."

"Still, must get a lot of women," he says, finally drifting onto our familiar topic, his Cheshire Cat grin sneaking its way back.

"Something like that." I wink and smile shyly.

"Well be careful—"

"_Please_ do not ask if I'm using protection."

He barks a laugh. "Ooh, she _is_ mean, isn't she?"

"She likes to tease, that's for sure."

Kaji cocks a brow in my direction. "For a second there, I would have said you were coming onto her."

"Kaji!"

He slaps his knee with a guffaw. "I can't let her have _all_ the fun now can I?"

"No, I suppose you can't," I mutter, praying I'm not blushing again today.

"What I was saying about being careful Shinji, I just meant… well, everyone knows you now. You have a name _and_ an image. And some girls are attracted to that. Some girls convince themselves they're attracted to that, even when they aren't. Just don't let people—let them _use_ you Shinji. I did that for a while because I thought it'd make me feel better. Long story short: it didn't."

"Is that why you and Misato—"

He shakes his head to stop me. "Not a word my man. Not one. This conversation never happened, etcetera, etcetera." He puts his finger to his lips.

"Right."

The tail end of his warning catches me off guard. Suddenly I remember where I am, what kind of place NERV has always been—full of conversations that never happened and secrets never told.

I'm getting antsy. I want to get back to Keio, plan another mystery, live another challenge. I want to get out of NERV-world, a place I had conveniently forgotten. I really want to get the hell away from where they must be housing the remaining Evangelions. And I really want to forget the plane ride coming here. Still, Kaji is worth it; or that's what some part of me justifies. Misato is beaming and maybe things will be better at home come winter break. And at least it's peaceful here. Despite lingering memories of anything but peaceful.

"Shinji."

My gaze snaps up to meet his. Something about the way he says my name. "Yes?"

"What was it you saw, walking in here today?"

Myself trying to strangle Asuka to death. "Nothing."

"Uh-huh. Been seeing a lot of nothings lately?" he asks casually. But I know the way the corner of his eye keeps my face in view we've left casual territory.

"Now and again," I say, matching his tone.

"Ever tell anyone about them?"

"Nothing to tell."

"Uh-huh. You ever see a doctor for them?"

"Kaji, I have enough people worrying about me without Misato in the wings. Don't start dadding me right off the bat. Everything's fine, really."

"Uh-huh…" His eyes hang on me, peeling away layer after layer with each second's pass. Gouging into another one of my secrets. What I hope isn't another one of my lies. But everything _is_ fine. Isn't it? "Okay, well if you ever want to talk about those nothings, _privately_, I'm all ears."

I glance at the camera in the corner of the ceiling.

"I've got to go. Get back to school and stuff," I say, and start to fumble with my things.

"Sure thing. I was getting sleepy anyways. See you… say, what do I call you?"

I think for a moment. "Shinji, I suppose. Misato does."

"See you, Shinji-kun."

"Ja ne."

The Section Twos on either side of the doors track my back all the way to the elevator without moving a muscle. I feel their gaze pierce through me behind the black lenses.

"Pilot Ikari."

I spin at a title I haven't heard since…

"Aya… nami."

* * *

**Ninth Revolution: I've got nothing to see here.**

* * *

We take the elevated train with little conversation. All she said was "I want to show you something" and then not much else. Rei doesn't have to say much else to get my attention. She gives one-word answers to all my further inquiries.

How's everything? Fine, she says.

Working hard? Not really, she says.

Any love interests? Quizzical stare, she gives.

If I never understood Rei before, it's safe to say time hasn't made anything easier. Cryptic does not even begin to encompass the enigma that is Rei Ayanami. But sitting next to her, the only two passengers in the car, the silence I would have once imagined as being awkward is now natural.

Rei doesn't make small talk. Occasionally she says something that blows your mind, but why bother with pleasantries? Ask Rei a truly deep question and you'll get a truly deep answer. Either that or "I don't know/understand." But even that, with some prodding, can turn into the protrusions of a personality hiding beneath the placid surface of this quiet girl. Learning how to deal with that is the trick. It's not like she tries to put all the burden of the conversation on you; she's just frighteningly genuine.

It took me a while to understand that about her, but knowing it now makes these silences bearable.

Rei's decision to continue working for NERV was understandable. "What else do I have?" she asked me once, when I confronted her about it. "What else do you want?" I countered. But Rei is content here, and I don't think she wants anything further than contentment. Either that or she isn't telling me. Which wouldn't be a surprise.

As the scenery rushes past us to the "clack-clack" of each pair of tracks, I think back to how I once knew Rei. The horror I once felt for her turned to pity in the aftermath of the Angels. And then to absolute envy. Because Rei, I'm certain of all people, understands more about life than anyone will ever attempt to know. The only tragedy is that she doesn't bother to share it with anyone. At least not usually.

But as we leave the train station, I wonder if perhaps I'm going to be lucky enough to find out what she thinks. If not now, then one day.

The walk goes slowly, as she takes her time leading me. Birds cry out as the sun sinks impossibly low and big over the fake horizon the way no real sun could—it's such a picturesque shade of orange that it could never really exist. And then the lake comes into view.

It is artificial of course, like everything poured into the Geofront. No lake like this could exist without someone's careful sculpting hand—it's simply too beautiful. I imagine all the architects in their fervor, studying myriads of impressionist landscapes to draw up this view. Lifetimes of renaissance masters pored over in every detail and brought to life with otaku-like obsession by the most brilliant (and well-funded) landscaping artist that ever lived.

The sun glints in jagged crisscrosses off the near still azure waters. Small mountains curl up in the distance in soft grays and browns, soft points reaching up into the orange light and filling with its ethereal glow. The greenery of the forest gleams all shades of green, and shivers gently as if alive and breathing. White pebbles and smooth shores stretch away in either direction, faultless, revealing nothing but the most unnatural natural beauty for miles.

The only thing that ruins the illusion is the buildings hanging above us, but they cannot capture my attention the way the softly stirring waters do.

"It's beautiful, Rei," I murmur, mesmerized.

She nods.

"You and Asuka had a fight on the flight to NERV today." It is not a question.

"We did, how did you—"

"I know many things," she says, so that her voice carries hardly more force or tone than breeze playing in our bangs. It's an understatement if I've ever heard one.

She turns and impales me on a red stare. "You both have hurt each other. Now you assume to exist apart is the solution."

I flounder in that stare and find my tongue again.

"Yes," I answer finally.

"Look into your heart. Do you not feel loneliness?"

I sigh as I consider this.

"Maybe I do. I don't feel happy not being friends with her, I think. But what choice do I have?"

She blinks and her head tilts just barely to the side. "Because you cause each other pain? This is why you must remain apart?"

"Yes."

Her eyes return to the lake. Water laps, filling in the silence with its slow rhythm. I feel myself accommodating to it, forgetting where I am so that I am lulled by the gentle surroundings.

"You cause each other this pain because you share a bond that will not break," she says quietly, shaking me out of my revelry. "You have both refused to leave each other, though you may trick yourselves otherwise. It is this confusion that makes you both hurt. A simultaneous wish to be together and apart. Your souls were once so close they frightened one another and withdrew; but the bond remains."

"She won't even speak to me anymore, Rei…"

"But you did not leave her."

And suddenly we aren't talking about separate apartments, arguments in school, shouting contests, or anything of the like. I tremble as my tears brim at the memories of this place broken, the real sky pouring in through a circular gouge torn in its spherical ceiling. The trees burned black. The earth still smoking. The gunfire. The explosions. The anguish. White wings. Blue sky. Red blood.

"_Been seeing a lot of nothings lately?"_

"No. I didn't leave her."

* * *

Sorry this is so late. I have excuses. Primarily final papers which are taking up most of my writing muscle. I was also really, really stuck on this for a while. I just could not figure out how to end. Then I remembered Rei. Hooray for Rei.

Last chapter of the second arc should come a little easier I hope. I would say it'll happen before christmas but I've got other schoolwork to worry about over the break. Sorry again. Thanks for being patient. Hopefully people are still reading.


	10. I killed a man in Kendo

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution **

**A/N:** This is massively late but I'm not dead and neither is this story. Full apology and explanation at the end.

* * *

I get back to Futarita on a separate carrier, just like Asuka asked for and quickly order Section Two to avoid a repeat of last time. In the hustle of the international port I slip by undetected and zone out to my Mozart for the ride back to campus. 

The black shadows behind me disappear at the campus periphery and I find myself quickly re-accommodated to familiar territory. Keio suddenly feels absurdly more real than anything else in the past few hours, as if I'd been whisked away to never never land in a NERV VTOL convoy. A fantasy-scape mishmashed with the very good and very bad. Even one witch to complete the picture.

Okay, uncalled for I know, but she has a way of getting me down like no other. And maybe, I rationalize, that's why we had to separate. Too close together for our own good. It is a hollow sounding if convenient truth, one Rei has already convinced me is wrong. Our bond, however screwed up it may be, is still intact somehow.

I enter Yuki's room, forgetting to knock. She shrieks and snaps shut the lid of her laptop.

"Shinji! You scared the shit out of me, coming in like that."

I shrug. "Sorry. I forgot you weren't expecting me. Watcha' lookin' at?" I point at the shut laptop. "Porn?"

She laughs. "Pervert." She stands and grabs me into a forceful hug. "Is everything okay?" she whispers, our faces inches apart.

"Yeah." I lean in and kiss her on the cheek. "Good news all around."

She sighs, squeezing me harder. "I was _so_ worried."

"Sorry, I should have told you but… secret stuff, you know."

"I know," she says and sounds like she really means it.

"I don't… want to make things any harder on you, but there's some things going around in NERV now. Stuff that might make me leave unexpectedly again. There may even be times where I can't tell you I'm leaving… So if I disappear for any reason, don't worry. And if you really are worried, call Section Two. If I really am missing they'll—"

"I understand. I know it's your job, Shinji."

_Was_ my job. But not anymore I want to say so badly. It wouldn't be fair to Yuki though; she doesn't deserve any of the anger I feel about that particular circumstance. Like all my dealings with NERV, this most recent encounter has left me feeling bitter yet at the same time understanding. I know why things work the way they do in this world—my conversation with Misato only made that clearer. But it doesn't mean I have to like it that way.

Bach's "Air" jingles in electronic tones from inside my pants.

I look at her and she nods for me to answer it. As I retrieve the AU phone, still blurting classical arpeggios in an imitation piano, Touji's name blinks at me from the faceplate.

"How'd you know I was back on campus?" I say incredulously when I answer.

"Call it a hunch. Got some news."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Are you sitting down?"

Why should I be, I wonder. "What is it?"

"Iyori Kurokawa is dead. He stepped in front of the Chuo line's express at 8:30am this morning."

The captain of the Kendo team. Former challenger of one Shinji Ikari. Has just painted himself all over the Tokyo Metro.

My senior year of high school, in literature class, we had the chance to read a translation of "A Scarlet Letter," the dreadfully slow but surprisingly interesting tale of Puritan adulterers in pre-Colonial America. I was particularly impressed with Hawthorne's eloquent elaborations on the physical sensation of guilt. It was slow, creeping, and dreadful. An aching agony building up in the breast of the amorous priest with a near-comedic intensity. Nothing like the vomit that spurted forth onto Yuki's pristine floor from my gaping mouth, casting the contents of the NERV cafeteria across the hardwood.

"SHINJI!" she shrieks, rushing to hold me as I sink onto the bed, phone still pressed to my ear.

"Shinji?" the tiny receiver asks into my eardrum. "Are you there man? Hello? Hello?"

Click. I end the call.

Yuki is dashing into her bunker of cleaning supplies I call the bathroom.

"He's dead… I…" did this?

* * *

**Tenth Revolution: I killed a man in Kendo just to watch him die.**

* * *

We've convened an emergency meeting. Much to the chagrin of Yuki who stared at me with a sullen, disbelieving look when I said I was leaving and apologized for the mess. Perhaps thinking it's some aftershock from NERV she was letting me get away with a stern warning this time, rather than demanding that I let her nurse back into good health. 

"If you don't explain this by the end of the day you are deep shit mister," she reminded me, as I reached for the door.

She'll figure it out when she gets around to checking her school email, I just hope that won't make her any angrier that I ran off like I did. But what choice did I have? We just crossed a boundary, I know—this is some unintended harm, that even if we are not directly responsible for, deserves to be discussed.

The living room is somber when I enter, the four of us wearing the same dejected expression.

Kensuke returns his head to his hands. "This is just… so fucked up."

Thankfully none of them were there to witness my reaction at Yuki's, though each reminded me at my entrance that it is certainly not my fault. It seems to be of little reassurance to me, but I'm too shocked to argue otherwise. Yet.

"I heard he stopped going to asaren. The whole club was upset but he wouldn't talk to any of them. They were worried… but no one figured…" Kazu mutters.

"From this point forward," Touji announces. "We have to understand that our actions may have unintended consequences or results. In the future we must do everything we can to minimize this… collateral damage."

"Agreed," Kensuke and Kazu sound off. The three of them turn to me, expecting my agreement.

"We didn't set out to destroy him," I whisper, putting in my own thoughts for the first time in the meeting. "But we should have known what would happen if I won. Kendo was all he had. We embarrassed him in front of the whole school. I'm sure they treated him differently afterwards, same as they've done with me. We can't just go around thinking of ourselves anymore. We need to start doing things for other people."

"What do you mean?" Touji asks, cocking his eyebrows.

"Look, you and I, we've got money out our ears. Our grandkids can retire on the interest we're earning. But what are we doing with it man?" I feel the anger building in me, surfacing from somewhere. My conversation with Asuka? My railroading by NERV and Misato? "What have we done with it so far?" I'm standing now, shouting at the three of them. "Fucking _pranks_! That was the best we could come up with? Adolescent bullshit to make ourselves 'heard?' _What the fuck_, guys? Is this the epitome of our combined intelligences? A goddamn Kendo match to humiliate some smug fourth year and a Zen inscription in ten-meter graffiti?"

The three of them stare back at me, wide-eyed. I can't remember getting that angry since… since Eva times, since the primal rage and fear of my submersions in the cockpit. Since my father made me almost kill Touji. Since I wanted to tear the whole Geofront apart, just to catch him in my fist and _squeeze_… like I did. Like I did to.

Stop it. Calm down.

I find my voice again.

"I vote today marks a new era for SEELE. Today, we stop doing stuff for ourselves and start helping other people. Every person we can find on campus who needs our help, however we can, _whatever it takes_."

They watch me in silence for a moment. I rub the fresh tears off on my forearm.

"I think," Kensuke begins, "it's a great idea. It's fitting, something we can do in memory of Iyori."

"I agree. 'A hotline for the hurting and helpless.' It sounds nice, better than anything I had in mind," Kazu chimes in.

Touji crosses his arms, still skeptical. "What exactly do you intend?" he asks quietly of the three of us.

They look at me to answer. I brood a moment, coming up with the full idea as I begin to speak it.

"Think for a moment about high school. Remember all those kids who got bullied and no one ever stood up for them? Remember that guy who could never quite work up the courage to ask out his crush? Or the girl who, no matter how hard she tried, could never quite break 80 on her trigonometry tests? What about the kid who tried to make the soccer club twice in a row but gave up after the second time? Or the quiet boy in the back of the classroom who didn't know how to make any friends—hell that was me! There are people all over campus who are wallowing, stuck because they don't know how to do for themselves what we did. And if only someone would encourage them, someone would take the time out to give them a little push, they could accomplish anything they wanted to! I want to help those kids. I want to be that push."

Touji, perhaps all too cognizant of his disability, looks back at me unconvinced. He sighs as if I've missed something crucial and begins to lecture the three of us.

"There are some things people are convinced they can't overcome," he says quietly. "Barriers that take time to break, wounds that take time to heal."

"But!" I interrupt. "Look at you Touji!" He glances at his prostheses, resting on the couch. "You can—you can do anything man! Better than us, most of the time. You're more in shape than I'll ever be, an inspiration to everyone. Even after what I…" My voice chokes on a sob. "Even after what I did to you!" I cry out at last.

Kazu shoots a confused glance my way, and then Kensuke's when I don't return it. Kensuke just shakes his head and puts a finer to his lips.

Slowly Touji rises from his seat, wobbling not from his metallic substitutes, but from a pain in his eyes that I can only imagine mirrors my own.

A plastic and a real hand clasp me on the back, embracing me.

"Not everyone is like you, Touji." I say as my tears stain his shoulder. "Not everyone… gets back up after they get knocked down. It took me a long, long time. Almost until it was too late." Almost until a Third Impact. "Iyori couldn't bring himself to. Stand up again."

He pats my head with his real hand.

"He didn't have to die," I say. "He could have beat me, if he'd believed in himself instead of some stupid reputation or how other people treat you." Because I know that means the least of all, sometimes.

"You wanted to tell him," Touji reassures me. "To stand up again."

"Yes," I sob.

It was in those moments we had the unanimous vote to become anonymous servants for good. Like the ninja ideals from our original inception, we would dart from crisis to crisis across campus, silent guardian angels, hiding in the shadows for anyone who might ever think, "It's too hard," or "I can't do this." We'd be there, waiting for the moment to strike with shuriken swiftness and remind them anything is possible if they'd only believe in themselves.

And I already had our first target in mind.

* * *

Her name was Ayumi Takamasa. She was incredibly short, quiet but energetic, with big puppy-dog eyes and a relatively attractive round face that made her appear much younger than eighteen years old. 

I knew Ayumi through a calculus class that most first years cringed at when I mentioned it to them. It was the class of death and doom, the requirement for a few unlucky declared majors that ate your time and pressed you reach for the C. It was led by a hyper-strict professor who seemed to delight in the insanity of numbers and symbols that is advanced mathematics. Ayumi Takamasa has a crush on a very, very ordinary looking sophomore who sits right next to me. Glasses with a short boring haircut and a severeness of formality in speech that screams "salary man in just two more years." Ayumi, being the only other first year in my class, is a bit of a Poindexter herself, and seems quite attracted to the upstanding young man. She practically gushes every time Taro raises his hand to answer our wild-eyed professor. Simply put, they are meant for one another.

But poor Taro-kun, so adept at his number crunching and pants ironing, hardly knows what to do with precocious little Ayumi. Though she's constantly asking him for (unneeded) extra-help after class, or complimenting him on his incredible skill with derivatives and so forth, Taro-kun can do little more than smile tightly and answer her questions. He's either totally dense or uptight beyond belief. And either way, Ayumi's gushes at his well-formulated answers are growing dimmer, her requests for study sessions infrequent. The ball is in his court and he doesn't even seem to know he's playing yet.

Each of us buys components of the lock-breaking equipment from a local hardware store, wearing over-sized baseball caps and clothes we purchased from a thrift store for just such an occasion. We spread the purchases plausibly across our three shadow members' credit cards, making each appear to be for a different home-improvement project. Its construction proves relatively painless and quick, Kensuke's careful internet research paying off nicely.

We dress in our ninja gear when night falls, preparing all the materials necessary for our intrusion. We slip into the early Saturday evening, the campus still relatively quiet before the late-night party surge of the weekend. His dorm is not to far away from ours so we jog the distance and manage not to be seen by anyone.

Inside the dorm is the real challenge. People move in and out of the hallways so we move slowly, careful to clear the stairwell before entering it. Thankfully, once again through Kensuke's careful research, we discover that Taro's room is at the end of the hall on the second floor, conveniently placed next a window whose view is obscured by a young and healthy Magnolia tree.

After clearing the stairs, Kensuke and Touji move to the base of the tree, just in case we should need some extra padding for the landing. Kazu and I rush up the flight of steps, and he breaches the hallway first, then motions me in. I follow, carefully cradling our lock-pick and other merchandise.

I put the flashlight-sized tool up to the doorknob after Kazu presses his ear to the door and nods to me. Suddenly he puts a hand on my shoulder, stopping me before I can force the lock. He tries the handle and we discover that Taro, for his meticulous nature, his spotlessly well-organized room and upstanding demeanor, does not lock the door. We both look at each other and laugh quietly enough to not be heard. Everyone has their secret vices, I suppose.

I get into the bathroom and fill the vase with water from his sink while Kazu puts the sweets on his pillow. I place the vase on his desk and carefully insert the single rose into the blue and white ceramics, then we prop the business card up on the front of its curved base.

On the front, in Japanese, it reads:

"Ayumi adores you. Be _gentle_, but hurry."

And on the back, in English:

"this is not charity. it's your decision to live.

--Seven-EyEd-Lie-sociEtykeio.ac.jp"

The "i"s of the English sentence are dotted with little painted eyes. The email address is another invention of Kensuke's, carefully shielded from the network administrators. It's all part of our careful plot to begin the distribution of the email address people can contact for us to help them.

You see, we chose Taro and Ayumi, not just because of my relative foreknowledge, but also because, Taro, quirky as ever, also happens to be a webmaster of a conspiracy theory site, and has formed a tiny group of like-minded socially inept boys who study our seven-eyed face and our subsequent defacing of the administration building with otaku-like justice to detail. Our calling card will not go unnoticed, and will quickly swirl into the annals of campus myth with Taro's disclosure to his associates.

The mission successful, we sweep out of the room in out through the open window onto the midsection of the spry Magnolia. We strip out of the black jumpsuits, peeling off the gloves and uniforms and stuffing them away in Touji's sports duffle bag, so that we appear once more in our normal get ups. We walk calmly away from the dorm, careful to wave and smile and the passing girls. They giggle and walk faster. No one is the wiser.

After splitting up from our house, I return to Yuki's.

I can tell by her face when I enter she's heard the news about Iyori's suicide.

I sit down next to her on her bed, neither of us looking at each other. She takes my hand in hers, stroking my fingers.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to worry."

She glances at the spot where I defiled her floor.

"A little late for that," she replies with a chuckle.

"Yeah," I smile, and lean my head onto her shoulder. "I guess so, huh?"

"Baka." She squeezes my waist. "Are you. Going to be okay, I mean?"

I imagine Ayumi's shocked face on Monday come Taro's striking confession at the end of class, when he retrieves the rose and chocolates from the hiding place in his backpack. Her blooming smile, reddening face to match the shade of the rose and the shade of Taro's as well. Imagine the gasps from my classmates and the round of applause I'll start from the back of class, pretending to be every bit as surprised as them.

"Yeah, I think I'll be okay now. I just needed to…"

"Do your own thing."

"Exactly."

A little white business card slides face down under her front door before we can say anything more. We both look at it, then each other, then it again.

Yuki laughs with me.

"What's that?" she asks me, smiling at me as if this is somehow my doing.

"One of my friends playing a trick on us," I answer.

It's the exact shade and size of the card we gave to Taro less than an hour ago, which gives it away. I can almost imagine its other side, saying something asinine about how much "Shinji likes you" in its carefully generic black font. Funny sure, but a little careless considering the stunt we just pulled off.

That's why I rush over to pick it up before she can get up.

"Hey!" she shouts, "don't read my mail!" but doesn't stand. Clearly to her, this is all part of the game.

I stick my tongue out at her annoyed grin and turn the card over.

The joke I expect turns weird.

The ink is red and smeared messily, the color of blood. Its handwriting is unfamiliar to me.

It says:

"If you hurt him, I'll kill you.

--Asuka"

My breath disappears, cutting my laugh short.

"What's it say?" Yuki asks, trying to lean over enough to read it from behind my back.

"Oh it's…" I try and start calmly, crumpling the note and shoving it into my pocket. "It's just Kazu. Party at my house tonight."

I turn back so she can see my best Kaji smile and I wink at her. She grins back.

"Sounds fun. Let's make an appearance."

I've rationalized there are some things worth lying about. Even to Yuki. The way the ink smears in my hand as I shove it deeper into my jeans, reminds me of NERV, makes me certain of what it is. It reminds me of the blood that stained my school uniform, the blood of countless soldiers who tried to kill Misato and I. Reminds me of the way the blood felt on my hands when I decided to save Asuka's life.

Well, what now Rei? The bond has just turned officially fucking weird. And scary.

* * *

Eeeeep. Okay. So I'm totally guilty of not updating for the last month or so. Understand that I graduate in May and my priorities are essentially all over the place right now (graduate on time, figure out what to do after college, finish my other schoolwork, etc.) You should know that I'm still writing, it's just that fanfiction has taken a backseat recently. That said, come summer I will be isolating myself for about two months to only write and do nothing else. No job. No friends or family. Just me and the keyboard. This should strike a note of hope (I think) with some of you. Thanks to everyone for all of the encouraging and nagging PMs and let me reassure you that if I forgot to reply it's not because I did not read them, it's probably because I simply forgot in the busy life I'm stuck in at the moment. I hope this chapter, for all its twists and turns, makes up for the lack of updates and gives you all something to look forward to in the third arc. Much love, your patient author. 


	11. I've had worse

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

_"I prayed heaven today_  
_Would bring its hammer down on me_  
_And pound you out of my head_  
_I can't think with you in it_

_I dragged all that I owned_  
_Down a dirt road to find you_  
_My shoes worn out and used_  
_They can't take me much farther_

_Something always takes the place_  
_Of missing pieces_  
_You can take and put together even though_  
_You know there's something missing"_  
_--Beck, Missing_

"Gents." Kensuke gives us a quick nod at the door to the "Scud Bucket," local attraction for the hipster crowd of southern Tokyo and various art-types of campus. Scud Bucket, despite its unpretentious name, was loathe to show student shows mainly due to the dismal (read: none) revenue they generated for the gallery and generally because the student scene did not seem able to organize properly for such a place. Kensuke had finagled one night out of them with the promise of a large crowd and his talent.

They left Kensuke's promotion entirely to himself, not much of a feat given that his photography and videography had gained notoriety around the campus art-heads. The more jocular-types, or jock-ular types, were generally amused at the prospect of seeing "nekkidchix" as Jun was happy to elaborate from time to time to one of us or Kensuke himself. Yuki had apparently been sucked into Aida's whirlwind scheme though he was always quick to remind me of the "tastefulness" with which she would be displayed. The tastefulness with which she would be ogled was probably more questionable, but that's okay as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not worried about her being wooed; she's made it rather apparent on several "heated" occasions just what she thinks of me.

I turn back and see him chatting with animated glee across the local jazz band just thrust into the stereo. Around me, a confusing mix of high-art wannabe yuppies, liberal arts majors, and the occasional dumbfounded jock from Jun's recommendations walk through the door, showing off their semi-formal attire over Chardonnay and fresh, as fresh as France to Japan can be, brie.

Yuki's linked with me arm and arm, which surprises me a little I guess. She's not a terribly shy person I mean, it's just that I'm not sure I would brave the opening where I am plastered on the wall two meters by two meters in my birthday suit.

Yuki has dressed up which is a first for me, and as my sly comments in the hour before our arrival did imply, "she cleans up nice." Her dark dress looks like it was tailored to her slender body rather than grabbed on the cheap from a Harajuku basement thrift shop down the stairs from the third intersection on Kurika Dori. The way she swishes, stuck on my arm, makes me feel like the untalented, rigor mortis-stricken sidekick in some jellyfish tango. We both indulged in a little wine ourselves before showing up.

"Yuki!" a girl's voice calls and we turn in unison to see an uncomfortable-looking Touji and beaming Hikari, hand on his prosthetic and grasped so lovingly that most people here probably don't realize it's a titanium composite yet.

I'm glad she called out her name instead of mine—I'm not quite used to this gathering-in-a-public-place thing but no one seems to see me behind the sports jacket (another Kurika thrift shop find) and the stubble.

"Hikari!" Yuki bounds over, dragging me along for the ride. Touji and I nod at one another as we approach.

"Looking very handsome this evening, Shinji-kun," Hikari says, oncing me over and then giving an approving smile.

"I owe all the credit to my stylist," I say, shrugging at Yuki who giggles.

"You could learn a thing or two, Touji," she says at the poor boy, who I suddenly remember must suffer exponentially more when confronted with formal situation multiplied by the Horaki gold standard for good behavior.

Yuki smiles at our poor soul. "He looks quite nice. I think you managed to counter-balance his Jockitude, Hikari-chan."

"Little victories," she says with a sigh, but smiles at hapless Touji from the corner of her mouth.

"Let's give the girls a chance to catch up," I offer, and Touji nods gratefully, but not too gratefully, so that Hikari finally releases her deathgrip and submits to the latest gossip courteously of Yuki's sharp eyes and ears.

I clap him on the back as we walk away.

"Way to take one for the team, man," I say with a grin, and guide him over to the wine that Hikari has no doubt forbid.

"Kensuke owes me for tonight. It's just like high school all over again, only this time I actually have to listen to what she says."

Soft laughter matches mine and we turn to find Kazu slicing out a bit of the cheese for his plate.

"Where's your date tonight?" I ask him sheepishly.

"We'll she's not spread-eagled on the wall so…"

Touji and Kazu both share a guffaw at my expense.

"It's her body," I say with a shrug. "I'm just here for the booze."

"I heard that," Kensuke announces, swaggering up to join us.

And there were are, the only four members of SEELE, schmoozing it up at Kensuke's show with the student body and the rest of world around us, none of them the wiser.

Time since that hectic Saturday seems to have slipped away in a haze of good deeds and Asaren tuned towards shortcuts and inaudibility on campus. For such generic college architecture, there sure is a lot to learn and we spent the past two weeks pouring over the blueprints of every building and testing ourselves on mock-disaster sessions where someone suddenly is about to discover our good deed prematurely.

The emails have already begun to trickle in to the Seven-EyEd-Lie-sociEty running the gambit from help with homework to relationship advice, even a plea for revenge against a teacher's pet. We swore ourselves to secrecy, so the rumor mills shall never be spinning to the beat of our tongue, I'm sure much to Hikari's and Yuki's collective dismay if they ever knew of our unprecedented access.

As for Ayumi and Taro, I managed to record most of it for posterity's sake thanks to my cellphone quickdraw come Monday's class. The mission is considered a success on all fronts and they've been catapulted to stardom as the campus' newest (some say cutest) couple. Taro's unexpected romantics are a common late night tale amongst the females, dreaming of their own crushes proposing in such a dramatic fashion.

In fact, one might just say that things seemed to be going extraordinarily well for Shinji Ikari if you were not cognizant of two very crucial things: the funeral of Iyori Kurokawa the week previous and the flaming redheaded gaijin that just stepped through the front door in her evening gown, fourth year hanging off her arm like too much muscle on its best behavior.

Touji's bitching and moaning over Hikari falls to nothing as the three of them catch the twinge of dread that must tear across my face and turn their heads to Miss Soryu warmly chatting up the Scud Bucket's manager as if they've known each other since grade school.

Yes Shinji Ikari, for all they could critique of him, was never said to have it very easy in life.

* * *

**Eleventh Revolution: I've had worse—but it involved dismembering.**

* * *

It rained. The day they put Iyori into the earth, it rained all night, rained all day. 

We came with a bouquet. Darkest darks, blackest blacks across our bodies. The plot was to the northeast, a four-hour train ride out of the city center. We said nothing to each other the whole way. Nothing was enough for us.

Through the windows, the gray city grows smaller, the streets empty, the building turn stubby, the lights go out on the insides, the color leaks away into the overcast sky until the gray has swallowed up the whole view. I will never forget this day.

How many things did I do wrong, how far off course did I have to go, to get here, to get to the place I don't belong. In Eva it would have been unthinkable—to do this to another person was not within my capacity, harming other people out of the question. I hid so much back then, trying as best I could not to cause others pain, doing my best to stay out of the way. It nearly destroyed me in the end.

The harder I tried not to tread on others, the more and more I crushed in on myself, squeezed inward till I nearly imploded. And my absence, for all its careful planning and sensitivity, still hurt others, because where they expected me, I was too timid to step forward.

In a way, I'd like to believe I'm undoing this with my proactive attitude, with the direction I'm driving SEELE. Like the touch of Touji's cold plastic hand on my shoulder, I feel the damage beginning to undo. Because there is no way to stay concealed forever, to avoid the pain of others at the cost of your own until… you die? I could have believed that once but now. No.

The answer is not the simplicity of the Hedgehog's dilemma Misato had once ascribed to me. And I think I owe the answer to only one person. As the rain beats on the steel of the JR Line, I imagine her face now, they way it used to be, the smile that flickered at me unexpectedly, the true being within the shell of pain, of fear, and abandonment. Asuka broke me once. She put me back together. Where I would be without her I cannot say.

But Iyori, poor Iyori was the undeserving participant in my headlong charge back to normality. My condition, my transformation, began at the hand of Asuka, but it certainly turned with the death of Iyori Kurokawa. Competition necessitates there be a loser, and there is no guarantee that everyone else in the world can be as well adjusted as you. Ironic I know, but it seems obvious to me now that in terms of security, self-confidence, and mental health in general, I was better off than Mr. Kurokawa. He lacked the drive pushing me through defeat, the confidence breaking past fear. He lacked, in some ways, everything I had.

I can imagine now, had the Seven-EyEd-Lie-sociEty started earlier, Kurokawa would have been the first among a group of unexpected participants, the members of the student body who, for all their strong and stable outward appearance, desperately reached out for SEELE to solve a searing chasm within their being. An inner division that no therapy would heal. And that is why I am responsible; like snapping the worn wood of an old Kendo sword, I broke someone riding that edge of impossible disrepair, broke him so totally there could be no recovery.

This is our stop. The cemetery is four blocks down the road. Yuki's hand finds mine as we depart and I open the umbrella for the two of thus. She holds the bouquet close to her breasts, careful to protect it from the drizzle.

I don't think we've ever been silent together for this long. But it feels right, and she knows I'll speak when I'm ready.

I remember the phone call from Touji as we traverse the four blocks, seeing his crumpled helpless body all over again, barely held together by the plugsuit, pulled from 03's wreckage. I remember Misato's chocked voice trying so hard to tell me who the fourth child was, trying so hard to tell me _I did a good job_. The horror and guilt, one singular rush from the pit of my stomach, a gag this time rather than a scream. The image of this mangled boy, just a few more months left before his graduation and the beginning of his life.

They don't know I'm coming, though I've imagined a variety of unseemly scenarios if they recognize me.

As we spot the corner of the cemetery, I consider how unusual it is to be having a Western-style funeral. It was the family's choice—Iyori left no will, not even a note to the family. Which was apparently one of the more upsetting parts of his unexpected passing. And the family opted for a western-style burial, complete with a priest. Apparently they were practicing Catholics, which made the element of suicide even worse. I have the strong suspicion, however, that Iyori, whoever he may have been, is not burning in hell. Hell and I never really believed in each other.

The service has already started by the time we arrive. We absorb into the surprisingly large throng of mourners: Iyori's got a crowd of some hundred people, the entire Kendo club included. When they get wind of my presence in the circle a few grimace and a few just cry harder. When Yuki reaches the front of the circle, she carefully lays the bouquet on the casket. It's closed because Iyori's been too damaged by the rushing commuter train. Instead a solemn photograph of him stands propped on the lid, his warm eyes staring back at all of us.

His family cries the hardest. I can easily make out the mother, clutching desperately to the arm of the husband, eyes open but unable to see beyond the grief, staring at the grass next to her son's plot. The stunned younger sister, transparent stains stretching off of beautiful silken cheeks, face contorted, brow flexing back and forth between perplexed, surprised, and devastated. She doesn't look to be out of high school and the way the sadness clings to her face seems inappropriate to me somehow, as if no one deserves to feel those things at that age.

I don't cry. I can't. All of the will to emotion leaves me, filling my self with a shuddering emptiness of feeling that I've never known before. A cruel sensation that this is intended, even inevitable sparks in my side, gouging its presence into my state of mind. Other than that hangs the lurid confidence that Iyori truly is dead, truly is laying somewhere behind the oak paneling before me and at the same time an infinite distance away, farther than I can ever imagine.

The service passes to the rhythm of the rain's steady hiss and the priest's lulling tones of passing beyond the physical barrier, recanting loved tales of kinship from friends, teachers, and family. It ends suddenly. We begin to walk away.

Over my shoulder I see Toshi, a younger Kendo member, slap the flowers off the lid of the casket. The crowd bubbles to give him space as he begins to stamp, his mouth open, raging, gasping, but betraying no sound, just hoarse breathing and the whimpering exhalation of his exertion. He stomps on the flowers, crushing them dead as the wood of the casket, the foot hammering down again and again, harder and harder, flatter and flatter. He stops when he is out of breath, panting over the crushed green plastic and flowers and another team member drags him away from the ruined thing. The crowd swells back into place, covering over the bouquet's cadaver in a swift motion. We can't see the casket anymore.

The silence holds for the ride back into Tokyo. The tracks clatter underneath us, their steady staccato mournful, constant.

* * *

"The kitchen sink is overflowing and the plumber has run out of wrenches," I whisper urgently. 

"Wha…" Yuki turns to me, confusion filling up her face. She's forgotten the signal. Mother of God, it gets worse.

"The signal!" I hiss.

"Oh… Oh! Oho!" She glances towards the entrance. Towards the swiftly approaching campus scandal of mythical proportions. They will carve this weekend into stone tablets, recount it at all who would dare invite their girlfriend to attend an event with the ex and her new boyfriend having also RSVP'd. Not that Asuka and me count as exes but we have enough drama between us.

The bloody crumpled business card, stuffed in my modest closet and well hidden from any who would sort through my garments, flits through my mind. Just adding another reminder to the extremely confusing situation I've just put myself in. There's no way to get away in time. Because Hikari has spotted her, and god damn it, for all the girl's masterful sense of etiquette she cannot seem to understand that me and the redhead do not play nice together.

"Asuka!" she chirps from our side and rushes forward to hug her. Asuka smiles from ear to ear, embracing her and glaring at me with her good eye from over Hikari's shoulder. I see malice, pure and livid in that blue eye. Oh. Dear. God.

The two exchange pleasantries and Touji is reluctantly summoned from cheese table. He talks half-heartedly with the fourth year, apparently another rising star of the physical education program in Keio. Meanwhile I try and hustle Yuki deeper into the throngs of yuppies appreciating the nudes of our college's female menagerie.

"So she's…."

"—Yeah, that's her alright."

"Hmm," Yuki ponders to herself, thoughtfully.

"Look, just, just don't react to anything she says. That's the only way to win."

"Win?" she asks, turning to me as if I've suddenly switched topics.

"Of course. It's all a competition to her. She probably came here to start a fight. God knows she's done it to me enough times already," I mutter, recalling past fights. Brawls, really.

"Shinji!" She laughs at me. "You almost sound scared of her…" she teases.

_If you hurt him, I'll kill you._

"Yeah… Something like that."

Kazu is approaching us swiftly from over my shoulder. "There's a back exit this way," he says, clapping me on the shoulder and gesturing towards the rear. I see genuine pity in his expression for the first time I can ever remember.

"No…" Yuki says before I can answer. "We are not going to leave before my boyfriend gets to see my pictures just because of some _chick_ with anger management problems."

I resist the urge to laugh nervously. I'm in a genuine pickle now. No way out. Rock meet hard place. Shinji meet Rock.

"Are you sure?" Kazu asks, more to me than her.

I swallow. Bite the bullet. "Yeah. It's… cool."

It's the right decision. It has to be. If I run away from her now, she thinks she's won. So fuck it. I'll have a ball. I'll fucking _enjoy myself_. She can brood all she wants—as far as I'm concerned, I can't see the red hair in a sea of dark.

The strategy works. For a while.

Yuki and I circle the room slowly, admiring each of the girls, while she makes an occasional jibe to me about their nudity, just to make sure I'm paying attention. As we snake our way through the gallery, I slowly forget about Asuka's scowl, about the face that spoke of inevitable violence and so many other things.

Out of nowhere they materialize just as we reach the first of three in a series of Yuki's nudes. The timing, for all its immaculate poorness, must have been intentional on her part, as if she'd been waiting for us to get to this part of the gallery for all this time, and having arrived she shows up with her own boytoy.

Yuki, at least the black-and-white two meter by two meter one, stares at me, smiling just a little seductively. She's curled around her knees, breasts tucked behind the strong leg muscles, and her most intimate places concealed in a crest of shadow, no doubt through Kensuke's elaborately well-plotted lighting schemes.

Asuka yawns beside us. Her boyfriend is mute as a rock.

"She's not that pretty, is she?" we both hear her whisper to him, far too loudly to be accidentally.

Which is a total lie. Yuki looks gorgeous in the photo. And if Asuka didn't have cynicism down to such "T," she'd sound jealous. Inwardly I flinch. Outwardly I exchange an amused glance with Yuki, who much to my relief wears the same smile. She's getting a kick out of this. Wow, is that… even possible? Asuka, to the left of us, cannot see our little moment as her good eye is also on the left, and remains blissfully ignorant of our little joke on her.

The four of us move with the flow of the crowd, carrying us down to the next picture. Yuki poses again, her face just as inviting as before, now the gentle curve of one nipple sneaking free from two cupped hands.

Asuka snorts to herself a little chuckle. The boyfriend stays brick-like, staring up at Yuki's penetrating stare with dogged intensity.

I relax a little. But I know the next picture will be the true salvo.

In the third part of the triptych, Yuki is spread for all to see, a beautiful darkness curling up between the twist of her legs. She struts into the foreground, one foot about to plant, looking invincible and empowered in her eternal motion.

"What a little whore," Asuka says softly.

Her boyfriend barks a laugh.

Now!

"I'm sorry?" I ask genuinely, turning to face the two of them.

She whirls on me, like a scythe turning to cleave corn. Oh it's fucking on.

"Excuse me?" she plays, innocently.

Yuki puts a placating hand on my shoulder. I smile magnanimously and ignore the reassuring touch. Maintain control.

"Oh, I was just wondering who you were calling a _whore_." I practically shout the last part. A sudden hush falls over the room as people turn their heads to see who's having the intense conversation. "You know, because, I would be too embarrassed to say that about any of the girls in these photographs, seeing as I go to school with all of them, and all of them are attending the opening. So I was just wondering which one it was…" I say more softly.

Around the room, a few previously smiling couples are frowning, and I can tell the insult I've implied on Asuka's behalf has really struck home. Asuka bridles, white teeth bearing like fangs.

"I have _no idea_ what you're talking about!" she growls.

Mr.-stack-of-bricks, who's a good six inches taller than me, takes a step towards me.

"Tell your girlfriend to back off before she gets in trouble," I say to Asuka, glancing at his dull, dumb stare.

The swing comes before Asuka can make her seething reply, the four-story pile of fuming testosterone lunging my way. It's clumsy from all the wine and I easily dodge out of the way of the fist aimed at my temple. I take the opening and drive my elbow into his solar plexus, knocking him onto me in one swift motion. I let him stay there and begin to drag his coughing, choking form to the front entrance, apologizing to the other gasping scensters as I pass.

"Sorry, my friend here has had a little too much to drink…" I offer, or some other variant, as I pass by the dumbstruck crowd.

Asuka, previously so stunned she's rooted in place behind me, suddenly remembers what's going on and rushes up to catch me. She grabs me with one vice-like hand, halting me.

"Where do you think you're taking him!" she shrieks, her voice a high-pitched whine in the otherwise nervous silence.

I glance her way and see (thankfully) that Kazu has held onto Yuki to keep her from following us.

"Oh, you're right… my mistake." I dump the dead weight, letting him slide off my shoulder eliciting a pained groan from him as he tumbles to the floor gracelessly. "You carry him," I offer and walk away before her gaping mouth can reply.

I approach the counter at the front, slapping down an ichiman yen note. "Sorry for the trouble, that's for if he throws up on anything before you get him outside. I think you might want to hurry." I hear gurgling sounds near the entrance followed by a sudden retching "wauuughh." I flinch at the noise. "Oops," I offer, to which the manager can only nod and sigh, retrieving my offered compensation.

Asuka has flies out of the entrance before I can reach Kensuke and begin apologize sincerely. She's left her date helpless on the floor, lying in his own digestive contents.

"It's okay man," Kensuke replies after my soft apologies as the murmuring calms down and people remember they're at an art show, not a prizefight. "He swung first."

"Yes. He did." I rub at the elbow. Yuki approaches with Kazu on her arm, bearing a disapproving frown. I find her gaze and put on my best chaste look.

"I know, I know, violence is not the answer…"

"Well as long as you know…" she intones, uncrossing her arms and pecking me on the cheek once.

Touji nudges me in the side. "That went pretty well, huh?" he says.

Hikari's paled face beside him, drained of all its blood and staring at me as if I have a tentacle growing out of my forehead seems to disagree.

"Yeah, not as bad as it could have been." I grin.

* * *

A/N: Quick update :D I don't have much to say about this one except that I hope I've kicked off the third arc in an exciting and enjoyable way. This chapter really could have been pure fun but I felt like I had to temper it with some real serious contemplation from Shinji. I mean he's not mentally invincible or anything. Iyori is a pain of guilt that will stay with him through a lot of the story I expect. Also, gotta love Asuka. When I originally wrote that scene, I kept trying to come up with some interjection for Shinji but everything I came up with got turned around on him by Asuka. I think he may have taken the only serious course of action that could possibly lead to victory on his part there. Heheh. Anyways, I hope Beck gives you the right idea of the tone I'm aiming for over these next five chaps. Looking forward to your patient and thoughtful reviews as always. Much love. 


	12. If not I

**A/N: **sorry for lateness, writer's block, then Europe as soon as I broke it. Special thanks to JT for being madd cool. FFN is acting weirdly, sorry if something doesn't format right, I had to redo all the italics. Sigh.

* * *

It is perhaps easy to assume one finds themselves in college, gets some sort of vision of who they are, where they are going and what they are doing in their lives. Well guess what, you are shit out of luck. Everyday I go through it I realize less and less of who I am and find myself bewildered, reaching out, for the random, for whatever will bewilder me.

I am a tree of a thousand unguided branches, trying to make sense out of a duty full of ninja routines, late-night parlances, drug interventions, psychotherapy, and you get so wrapped up in solving _other people's_ problems you forget how fucked up _you_ are. I forget I'm substituting Yuki for my mother, letting her fulfill her own Wendy-complex (though I must admit I'm not a very dashing Peter Pan) and while I can churn out the grades (4.0 GPA) the substance of the learning, the change within self leaves me feeling empty, vulnerable, and frail.

So perhaps that's what keeps us driving, sweating, bleeding in Asaren, practicing Judo on gravel (my God you should see the scars) keeps us itching in the showers, in our nudity, scratching at the tingling skin where we've barbed ourselves with shame or our hope or just our determination. Touji's sun, burning white and yellow, his symbol of infinite strength: the girl named after light and the light of his life. Or Kensuke's third eye, purple and unblinking, a camera lens instead of a pupil, embroidering the top of his spine, his way of understanding and coping with a warzone childhood and a world that would peg him with dirty names like _otaku_ when in fact his vision lets those around him glow in perfection, like the stunning girls of our campus in the art show I brawled through. Or is it Kazu's red obelisk, intimidating, feminine, staring back at a world that would identify him not by his own merits but by the company he keeps and their infamy.

Yes, it is Kazu, I think, that lives under the heaviest, most subtle shadow of them all, the struggling poet trying to encapsulate his soul in words while captivated listeners leave the campus teahouse whispering of misconstrued meanings into the lives of his famed compatriots, ever focused on his social strata and not his personal value.

We are each, in our very own ways, struggling with the idea of youth, growing up, and the pain of home rendered foreign. Some lost our innocence sooner than others, but there remains the taint of devastation hovering in us all, this warped generation, who grew up with monsters accosting them from the sea and sky, always on the lookout for another, living in fear under the shady doings of a UN-sanctioned body with no allegiance to our nation or government, their shadowy figures fluttering at the edge of campus, watching, reporting, recording our lives in their dull minutia.

We are, like all those born post-Second Impact, lucky in our lives, not one of those wiped away in calamity or in the struggle to follow, strange heroes of chance, born of a time of uproar, change, fear, and excitement. We know a suffering world, and as we read our Keio acceptance letters, perhaps the beginning of a great long exhalation, a breath held in since the start of NERV's unfathomable war, begins to release with the hope that maybe, just maybe things would be okay again. Normal even.

The gravel slaps my side with sudden torque. Touji's huffed exhalation plume in my face before  
the world spins darker. I try and account for my place in this world of endless sparring, a string of battles with unknowable enemies, the reason for my odd destiny. And the only comfort I find is that, perhaps finally, for the first time, I've chosen for myself the next steps to take in a lifetime full of coping, just existing, abandoned and frightened, withdrawn, unable to connect.

The morning jog back to campus bounces through my aching bones with rhythmic assurance.

Yuki snores delightful little honks as I gently slide the door open and I stop for a moment, sweating, heaving, to watch her serene face, her hair a black satin halo. My rock, the sane part of a life turned even stranger by ninja escapes across rooftops, embroiling campus drama slipped to me in silent confessions to the faceless, but listening Seven EyEd Lie sociEty.

I've taken to sleeping here more frequently after Asuka's threatening business card, covered in crimson crusted blood. After her humiliation at the art gallery I keep my ears perked up at her mention in campus rumor, weary of some retaliation. Meanwhile, as night falls, we meet in silence, tool belts full of maneuvering gear, all in place to softly work our campus magic, to save little lost sheep with unseen hands and disappear back into shadow and myth or occasional rumor of our sighting.

As I've learned, the college campus can be as dark as many a place in the unprivileged world. As our total secrecy grows untarnished the confessions turn darker, uglier: tales of drug abuse, violent childhoods and abusive parents, abusive relationships (often the hardest for us to cope with, knowing we cannot report them to the administration.) Our first tale of rape came in just a day ago, and while we looked at each other aghast in silence, we realize perhaps we have taken on a burden we alone were not prepared to bear.

Our colleagues, who seem so confident and alive on the outside, deal with the realities of a dark, adult world full of fear and danger, its stain lurking behind the eyes of fellow students.

The world, even as we reach for it in our infancy, is not a terribly forgiving place, least of all towards naïveté.

Very quickly, I sneak a peak at our email file, using Yuki's computer to glimpse into Pandora's Box for the morning.

Cold chill sweeps up my bared chest.

There is one new message.

The subject line is very simple, to the point:

"I know who murdered Iyori Kurokawa and I know why"

The message is even shorter: "and the police won't catch her"

I log out with trembling hands and shut the lid of the laptop slowly.

A taunt?

A lie?

A sick joke?

Or worst of all: the truth?

My phone finds its way to my hand, flips open.

I watch the school grounds at dawn's early light, now full of autumn leaves, barely red and yellow tumbling carcasses in bluish twilight, twirled and twisted by the wind. Playing in little eddies, swirling with winter's approaching serendipity, carefree in death.

"Touji, we aren't going to class today. Tell them."

I close the faceplate.

* * *

**Twelfth Revolution: If not I, then who will set things right? **

* * *

The station is small and nearly forgettable, well outside the Yamanote's ring marking inner Tokyo. It is an outdoor station, one of the last before the plunge underground, and it is quiet. The morning has turned colder since dawn and storm clouds loom, threatening at a distance, dark and swelled with rain.

It is, if nothing else, an unremarkable place for a suicide. A quiet, sleepy station in residential outskirts, small houses, little traffic, and unpopulated even in the morning rush.

Touji paces the yellow warning line of the station edge like a caged panther. The black sedans of Section Two sweep by behind the fence, alternating direction on two minute intervals. A salary man further down the way yawns and brushes something off his briefcase.

Kensuke films the approaching train while Kazu just stares and stares and stares at it.

It is nearly the exact minute of Iyori's death. Tokyo trains have a habit of running on time.

I start moving towards the salary man and motion the others to follow. The train pulls in with a hiss and a sigh, no broken bones of dead children to catch in its wheels. We board.

Down the cabin a Section Two pretends to read the morning paper. Two girl high school students in uniform break into excited whispers at our entrance. One of them tries to sneak a picture with her camera phone without being too obvious. The Section Two glances their way, shrugs, dives back into the paper. They never even notice him, like most everyone else.

"Touji, go distract them, I have something I need to take care of," I ask.

He winks and struts towards the pair. One of them gives a little shriek as their faces turn bright red and they start bobbing their heads in little bows.

I sit down next to the salary man. Kensuke sits across from us and Kazu swings from two handles to our side.

"Good morning, I'm sorry to bother you, but can I ask you something?" I start in my most practiced, polite _keigo_.

He looks up, as if trying to figure out if I'm addressing him. Blinks. Something like recognition fills his face. "Hey! Aren't you—"

"Yes," I say firmly, cutting him off. "I am." I try to compress the sigh to nothing, return to my inquiry. "Do you take this train every morning?"

He looks a little startled by this. Glances at Kensuke whose eyes are fixed on him and burning with interest. Kazu fidgets with a button on his sleeve, gaze lost out the window.

"Yes, I do," the man answers uncertainly. "Why do you—"

"Do you remember, a little over a week ago, there was a suicide here, at your station?"

"Ah," he says, eyes searching the ceiling. "Yeah, that was a rough morning. Had to take a taxi to work. The boss really dragged me over the fire for that one…" He laughs a little. I try to ignore the sickening sensation that this man, this fucking _insect_, is laughing at the death of my fellow student, complaining of its dent in his morning commute. I ground my rage into the most easy smile I can manage, letting the mask of good humor surround my face.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I'm asking because the boy was a friend of ours." I gesture at Kensuke and Kazu as the man's face goes colder. They nod as his stare greets them. "I was just wondering if you remember seeing him that morning?"

"Oh, uh…" He plays with his tie, anxiously. "I'm sorry to hear that. I—I think I remember seeing him—"

Kazu curses as his button pops off and rolls down through the cabin. He scrambles off after it. The salary man tries to ignore the interruption.

"He was standing at the other end of the station. Everything happened very fast, I didn't see him jump. The train stopped halfway into the station and everyone knew there was something wrong. Then I saw the blood on the front. It was a… a strange morning."

I glance at Kensuke, who is now locking eyes with me.

"I understand," I reply softly. "Did you, did you see anyone with him, or, close to him? Was he talking to anyone?"

"Not that I can remember. There aren't many people here in the morning, it's a pretty quiet place, this neighborhood, and most people are well enough off they can afford to drive."

"Was there anyone else at the station?"

He shrugs.

"Maybe, I think a lady fainted when she saw the car. Probably one or two I guess…" His expression turns sour. "Why do you want to know this stuff, anyways?"

Kensuke, bless him, jumps in while I struggle for an answer.

"We're doing a documentary on his life," he says, patting the camera. "We're trying to get a feel for the scene. It's a pretty important moment in the movie after all."

The man, hearing this, makes wizened eyes at Kensuke.

"Ah… I see. That's very noble of you."

I try to think of how to ask it without sounding like a detective.

"Do remember anything else about that morning, anything interesting, or… unusual?"

He rubs at his chin for a moment.

"It was," he admits, "a pretty average day really. That's kind of how these things go though, right? Everything seems normal and then—bam! Tragedy."

"So, nothing at all then? Really, any details would help. We're trying to re-imagine the scene…" I explain, hoping it might trigger something.

"Well…" He snorts at his recollection. "Well I guess, I dunno, I saw a foreigner there that morning."

I feel my face trying not to squirm under the surprise.

"Pretty girl, about your age. I wouldn't think much of it normally but, you don't see many in our neighborhood, foreigners that is. Had this long red hair."

The hair on the back of my neck leaps to upright. I feel the goosebumps ride down my neck into my arms.

My head turns like one of those autoshow displays, slow and deliberate, until I have Kensuke's face in view. His eyes have gone nearly as wide as the camera lens.

I think of the business card.

_If you hurt him, I'll kill you._

* * *

I'm trying to stop shaking over a Starbucks green tea. Kensuke just stares into the table, rocking back and forth, hands firmly clamped on the sides of the chair.

"What the fuck did he say, Shinji?" Touji tries again, unable to conceal the irritation. Kazu's brow is knit into a confused, uncertain knot.

"Yeah, what did I miss, man?" my roommate parrots.

Kensuke looks up at me again, searching. I shake my head.

"I—I—" I have no idea how to answer, Touji.

"Was it, did he see something?" Kazu wonders.

Kensuke opens his mouth.

"No!" I hiss at him, my finger jabbed across the table. "I swear to God, Kensuke, not one word, _not one,_ or…" Or what, Shinji? What the fuck can you do? "If it's the last thing I ever ask you, I'm begging you… just. _Don't_. Okay?"

He closes his mouth, lips folding into a worried grimace.

"This," I try and explain. "This is something Kensuke and I have to handle by ourselves. Okay?"

Touji's anger goes nowhere.

"No, it's not fucking okay, Shinji!" He stops himself, noticing the curious faces from patrons near enough to hear his raised voice. Exhales. "It's not okay," he begins again, in whisper, "but if it's what you want, then… I trust you."

I reach out and squeeze his hand across the table.

"Thanks. You two should just, go home, or something. Kensuke and I have some things to discuss."

"Right. Well, we're off then, I guess," Kazu resolves, patting me on the back as he and Touji depart. The doors have barely shut on their backs before Kensuke starts.

"_What _are you doing, Shinji? We _can't_ keep this a secret. We have to—have to go to the police, or something, I mean, what if she, what if—"

"Slow down!" I command. "Relax, okay?" I don't know if I'm telling him or myself to do it though.

I bite down on a knuckle, posed like Rodin's thinker going through teething. I'm trying to regain control of this situation, this impossible situation.

"Look, the police, they think they already have this nailed down. We have nothing conclusive, just an odd set of coincidences—" More than you even know, Ken. But I haven't showed the business card to anyone thankfully. "—and one hazy eye witness report. We can't go running around and spread this when it… it might not even…" But even as I try and make the words come, I cannot bring myself to say it. Please let me be wrong. Please let it not be true.

"I know, I know," he says, holding up his palms. "It's just… holy shit, what a mess."

And that's exactly it. Summary of my life, Ken. A mess that keeps turning worse.

"Kensuke, it could be, it could just be that they met, to, I don't know, talk, or something."

"Out in the middle of fucking nowhere? Why would they meet all the way out there? And right before his death?"

He was right. It sounded suspicious no matter how you framed it. Even more so that Asuka had never been mentioned in the investigation, as far as I knew anyway, which meant that she was concealing her having been there, moments before or after his death. Weird, weird stacks of coincidences, piling up like so many ugly secrets.

Fuck, Asuka! Fuck! Why? Why…

"Even if, even if our worst fears are true, think about it for a second. NERV won't let this make the press. They, they might even be covering it up already…" I say it as it occurs to me and it leaves me stunned for a breath. Now _that_ I hadn't considered. Kensuke's eyes flicker to a Section Two agent strolling past our window, trying to look casual, never making eye contact with him. Ken's face is one of barely concealed paranoia as the agent slips past silently.

"My point is," I continue when he's out of sight, "we are sticking our nose into something much bigger than a murder here—you, I, all of us, we're all caught up in the middle of this."

"What can we do?" he whimpers, putting his head in his hands. "If you're right, I mean, what the hell do we do? Go on with our lives and pretend this never happened?"

_No_. The memory of his funeral, of the pain and dark of that day, finds me in our cold, quiet Starbucks and screams. I won't—can't let this go. Some part of me won't let it happen.

"No, Ken. We have to see this to the end. We have to find out what happened, and if it's bad, then we, we… get her help. Institutionalized."

The answer sounds hollow even to my ears. I know what Souryu's do to themselves in mental wards. Asuka's got a legacy in those. Her mother saw to that. Could I? Could I really put her some place like that?

Could I bring myself to do it?

Kensuke looks up at me, takes off the glasses and wipes at fresh tears.

"Fuck. Fuck, Shinji," he whispers.

My phone rings. Misato.

I hold up one finger and answer as neutrally as I can bare.

"Hello?"

"_What_ were you doing at that station?" she starts. Her tone is anything but friendly.

I gulp. What can I say? Before I can try and answer she cuts me off.

"Look, Shinji, you and your friends can do what you want in your spare time, but you need to warn us if you're going to go running off like that again. It's not my place to tell you not to skip classes, you're an adult now, you can do as like. But when you leave campus, especially unexpectedly, it puts us in a serious situation."

I swallow. Kensuke stares at me, nervously fiddling with the camera on the table before us.

"A _security_ situation, Shinji," she elaborates.

"I'm sorry, Misato."

"Shinji, I've already explained how this works…" She sounds tired, stressed out, and a little anxious. "The system is designed to be as flexible as we can make it. You didn't want full-time bodyguards, and I want to respect your wishes. But _this_… Shinji, what were you thinking?"

"I, I don't know…"

"Damn it! That's not good enough. If you don't warn us… you're putting yourself in danger." More than you know. "And you make our job, my job, harder."

"I understand."

But I hate it. I hate how NERV comes between us. How she sounds like she's still giving me orders. I tried, as best as I could, to make a clean break. I didn't ask to be a celebrity. It happened. These are the consequences.

"Now, why were you at the train station where Iyori Kurokawa killed himself?"

So they know. Of course they would.

"I wanted to see the place where he died."

Kensuke rears back at my answer, catching the angle of the conversation now. His hands stop moving, trembling just visibly.

"I see. And why were you talking Mr. Kawashima on the train?"

Fuck. NERV, and its intelligence forces at work, just as good as in their prime if not better. Misato probably knew everything. They'd probably already questioned him and everyone there. My only option is the truth or as close as I can get to it. Maybe the agent on the train heard everything.

"I wanted to know if he'd seen him. I wanted to know, I guess, I wanted to know why he killed himself." I have to turn this around. Somehow. I try and sound just a little angry. And maybe I am too. "Why are you interrogating me?"

Her reply comes late, I've surprised her I think. "Shinji, I didn't mean for this…"

"Yeah, well, good job," I interrupt. "Because that's what it sounds like to me."

"Shinji…" Unmistakable pain in her tone, even across miles of thin air, riding invisible electromagnetic waves all the way to me.

"What the hell do you want from me, Misato? He's dead. Okay? You want me to spell it out for you, that I feel guilty? Responsible. I'm sure you already know, about the kendo match, about all of it, with your little fucking spies keeping tabs on me. You want the psychoanalysis now too? Want me to break it down?"

It's been a long, long time since I've spoken to Misato like this. Promises you make yourself are so damn hard to keep. No choice now. Just have to keep going.

"My question is why the hell do you care so much about him?"

She sounds cool and distant when she answers.

"Even if a janitor who cleans your hall has a heart-attack, we investigate it, Shinji. It's what we do. To protect you, all of you."

Like I feared. Do they already know then?

"How's that working for you?" I say, trading anger for sarcasm.

"I'm not going to comment on an ongoing investigation," she snaps, catching my venom and returning it.

"Fine. I don't want to be part of it anyways."

Is the conversation over? I really want it to be.

"Shinji, don't to this again."

I'm not sure if she's talking about leaving campus or the conversation. Perhaps that's why I go off. Or maybe it's the fear, the pain, the awfulness of trying to keep this secret. Maybe it's that I think they're covering it up. And somehow that makes it worse.

"Get out of my life!"

I slam the phone shut and turn it off. And instantly feel the regret, mild but somewhere there. It will be worse later.

Kensuke's face is flushed for my benefit.

"Sorry you had to hear that," I offer, watching the little blank cover of the phone.

He looks at me, gives a little smile and shrugs. I love him for that.

"Ken, you don't have to be part of this. I…" Yes, it's true, isn't it? "Maybe I don't want you to be."

"You don't have to do this alone, man…"

"I know that. But. I need to."

* * *

I have two excuses. I was in Japan for a month. I was in Europe for a month. And I know, if anything that probably just makes you pissed I got to go. I know MC is jealous, hahahaha:P

But, the uptick is I got to be in Tokyo again. Which made it easier to write this. This story is writing itself. The next chapter could be anything.

Thanks for the read, thanks for the reviews, love you guys.


	13. I watched

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

There are, I can say without a doubt, some foolish things I've done in my life. There are regrets, there are things I wish I'd never said, actions I wish I'd never taken. Asuka Langley Souryu was shot, after all. To pretend that everything had somehow been going according to plan up to this moment is utter fallacy.

But forgetting the fact I'm bleeding to death, just for a moment, my mind continues its way along the errant path that brought me here. To say my life flashed before my eyes is not an exaggeration but then, to elaborate, my mistakes flashed most brightly.

* * *

A cat and mouse game engaged with Section Two my freshman year of college. It was undoubtedly the most brash idea I'd ever considered. But I ask you wholeheartedly, if you really think I had any choice in the matter?

The culprit was clear after our excursion to the train station where Kurokawa had killed—excuse me, the station where Kurokawa had been _murdered_. But of course I had my doubts, and more so than that, I had my fears.

It's an odd position to be put in. My feelings towards Asuka were already ambivalent wavering very narrowly towards a strong dislike. I had, excusably, grown rather tired of her, her treatment of my friends and I. Truthfully, I have to admit that as the year had been going, other things were on my mind. SEELE was of primary concern, a bizarre obsession that had grown with our steady effort into something of a ninja-do-gooders service, a service that had gotten way, way over our heads.

In fact, the day we'd received the ominous, perhaps even satisfied email, we'd already been planning to discuss how to proceed on the weighty rape accusation. It was a problem I doubt any of us were adequately ready to deal with.

And then my world had toppled in on itself when talking to an unassuming salary man on his morning commute.

Asuka, a killer? I suspected her to be many a less-than-wholesome thing in her spare time but hardly an unprovoked killer.

Unprovoked. There was a word I'd have to be giving some thought to. If anything, the meditated nature of the crime had already been touched upon in my frosty conversation with Misato. Section Two was investigating because that's what they do… though as she explained, that's the procedure for anyone who expires with some relationship to a former pilot, no matter how marginal the relationship or how benign the death.

And there was the business card. Signed in blood, a threat that never reached Yuki. But what I once could have written off as some complex of misguided jealously and, dare I say, even a protectiveness over me had turned frightening… Kurokawa's demise looked more the work of someone demented and obsessed with me. The near inverse of the non-existent relationship I had with Asuka.

Of course, as I had considered this, I had decided quite firmly that even _that_ could be written off as characteristic of her bi-polar dealings with me.

So I stewed. I stewed and stewed, and, in my impatience, settled back upon the theory which had enraged me in my conversation with Kensuke over coffee. Sure it might have been jumping the gun but… if it was Asuka, was there any way NERV would let it be found out? Of course not, my rational mind answered. The damage that would be done to the image of the organization would be irreparable. Rei was already too much of a secret not to mention un-engaging as a public presence. That left myself, who loathed the publicity heaped on me, Touji, who tolerated it, and Asuka, who bathed in the glamour. It was Asuka which gave NERV the popularity and licensing fees to remain the military might it was today. Was it not obvious then, that if some calamity were to befall her character, it would be covered up at all cost?

Undoubtedly.

And thus had begun the game, one foolhardy in the extreme, that I had now somehow been polarized against Section Two in unmasking the cover up of Kurokawa's death.

In hindsight, it's obvious I never stood a chance. But I was young enough and dumb enough to take a crack at playing detective, content to let myself be caught up in the intrigue so long as I spared Kensuke, Touji, and Kazu the danger of involving them any further.

Kurokawa had been officially tabled as a SEELE issue. I carried on my involvement in it as a secret from all of them, a clandestine operation, a warfare of one against the faceless, countless will and manpower of the greatest intelligence apparatus in the world to date.

I was doomed from the start.

* * *

**Thirteenth Revolution: I watched the watchers.**

* * *

I'd been going to our meeting when he accosted me. I didn't recognize him, though the voice sounded familiar. It should have been the giveaway.

"Ikari-kun?" it comes from over my shoulder.

I turn at the sound of the voice. Getting haggled for an autograph isn't exactly common fair on campus so I was caught off guard.

Crack. His fist plows my nose with a healthy snap of flesh. He must have been following very closely to get in a shot like that so quickly.

I stumble away, landing on my ass past two steps, hand reflexively coming up to my face. It's warm and wet.

It must have looked a funny circumstance really. He is half my size, and though I'd grown tall towards the end of high school, that's still saying a lot. The kid is nearly _petite_ compared to me, but he clearly isn't weak either.

He rubs at his fist and smiles with ugly eyes. I am too dizzy to get up.

"That was for sempai," he pronounces.

That voice. It was the same as the one on the phone, that boy I'd arranged the challenge with, probably the most junior member of the Kendo club. The one who'd clearly been offended that I would have the audacity to ask such a thing. I hadn't seen him at the funeral. But I should have known, listening to him on the phone, how he revered Kurokawa. His name is Daichi. Daichi something. I think I have lit with him.

He walks up calmly and plants another one on my chin before I can bring my arms up. It doesn't feel like much until my head spins into the pavement. Stars leap up from the corners of my eyes, plastering the sky in non-colors. My breath flees me.

"That was for me," I hear him say somewhere absurdly far from me.

Something sour running into my mouth. Like LCL. Blood?

Something else catches the side of my face. Then again. Then again. And again.

I think I hear names maybe. Kurokawa's teammates. Or? It's hard to tell. Hard to think about them really, a meaningless string of names not worth concentrating on. There wasn't much worth concentrating on.

The sky is plastered over by the stars.

"The situation is under control."

I want to laugh but I don't know how. Under control. Fuck yeah it is.

"IP is stabilized. We've got the other one in custody."

Someone lifting my head up. Fuck! I want to scream. It hurts so much. No mouth to make sounds with. No tongue to swear, no lips to curse. My face is an empty bowl.

The dream turns embarrassing. It's one of those dreams where you're late for class only the moment you walk in you remember you're naked and everyone in the lecture is looking at you with this "what the fuck?" face and the girls are kind of blushing or averting their eyes and you think "No! NO!" and wake up. It feels like I'm waking up. But the faces just get more vivid.

Am I naked? Please let me not be naked.

But it _is_ like waking up. I'm in my sheets. Definitely in bed. Only this one floats through campus down a boulevard of students, like my own little parade. I try to smile at them. It comes out as a moan. My eyes won't open so good and the tears are making it hard to see. What a weird dream. What a weird parade.

But it's coming to an end. An ambulance. How weird is that? "Is somebody hurt?" I try to say. Blood gags me.

* * *

Ceiling. I know this place. I'm in a hospital. I have a sixth sense for waking up in hospitals. I spent so much of my teenaged life waking up in them, over and over again. I am used to the transition. The shock amnesia. How did I get here? Calm down, I remind myself.

Kaworu had been talking and then—she was fighting them and—oh God, oh God, not the birds, descending on her, you saw the lances fall, you watched but you can't let them, not any further, not _one more second!_—the only thing left to do, I scream.

"Asuka!"

And up, out of the bed. And back down. The pain hits my vision like a needle skipping on a record. I do a good pancake, losing the will for anything else.

"Jesus!" someone answers.

Yuki's face occludes the ceiling. Her eyes dribble tears on my face. They're wonderfully warm. And I'm so thirsty. I'm panting. Usually it's not so real. But this time was bad. Real bad. Usually that stays nice and locked up, like it's supposed to.

"_Been seeing a lot of nothings lately?"_

"Yuki," says a frog in the room. He must have taken over my speaking functions temporarily.

She wipes at her eyes. More warm rain on my face with each stroke of her palm.

She puts her head in nook between my head and shoulder and cries for a while. It hurts but I don't want the frog to tell her anything more for the moment, feeling her arms envelope me.

This is not so bad, I conclude. Not such a terrible way to be. If this is the pay off.

She calms herself and takes her face out of my pillow.

"How do you feel?"

"Oh, stellar, you know…" the frog croaks through my lips.

I like that. I wish I could do this voice on command.

She laughs despite herself. I feel a real smile come bubbling up, listening to her.

"I'm going to try that sitting up thing again."

"Don't bother," she says before I can muster myself.

The bed starts pulling me upright with a loud buzz. It hurts but it's not quite the agony of the wake up.

I put a hand to my stubble. The skin is raw, and it feels like someone put a balloon inside my mouth and forgot to stop blowing it up.

"Mutherfucker got me righteous."

"They put in three new teeth. You should see yourself." She almost makes a joke out of the second part but I can hear the anxiety under it.

"Yeah?"

"Your eyes look like they have enough mascara for the rest of the ward."

"Is that why it feels like I'm squinting?"

"They said the swelling should go down soon. I think they won't keep you here overnight."

"Fuck right they won't."

She rears back a little.

"Sorry. It's not…" I sigh. "Sorry."

Blessedly, the look leaves her face and the reassuring smile of my girlfriend returns. She walks over to the bedside table. Lillies.

"My favorite. How did you…" I stammer as she carries them and hands me the vase.

My nose does a poor job of appreciating the effort.

"I didn't, actually. These are from someone else."

"Misato," I resolve, sticking them in my face. I think I can almost smell them. But my nose feel like someone taped it on at the last minute, a snowman with his nearly forgotten carrot. The flower petals feel strange and electric brushing the skin of my eyes.

"No. Well, she told me not to tell but, I told her you'd probably guess anyways."

I retract the bouquet mechanically, arms working themselves away from me. I catch a funny look from her between the stems.

"Asu… ka?" It claws its way from my deadweight tongue.

She gives a little shrug and nods.

The lilies covering my hands, running their crimson to tangerine spectrum. Draped over my wrists. Iyori Kurokawa's entrails, swinging from my fists, slick with sheets of shit and blood. The vase meets the floor with a polite shattering and splash.

Yuki gapes at me then down at the ruined flowers.

"I'm just." Blood. It's all over your hands. Look at all of it. "Just surprised. Didn't expect."

"Shit. I liked those," she says, an afterthought. Her eyes are distant, drifting past the remains of the present.

"Forget it. Sorry." I scan the room. "Get me that wheelchair," I say, jabbing my figure at the folded steel tucked behind the door.

"Shinji. You aren't, I mean, you _can't_ go. You know that right?" She almost laughs again.

"Like hell I do. The_ chair_," I insist.

She takes a step towards it.

"We shouldn't—I shouldn't be helping you do this."

"But you will. Because you trust me."

She grabs the handles and yanks it out, unfolds it.

"Damn it, Shinji," she says absently.

"That's my girl."

* * *

I suppose I was on a roll of screw ups for the day. Maybe that's why I tried to sneak into her room.

There I was, mottle-faced, calmly dragging myself up flight after flight of stairs passed repulsed freshman girls. Most of them recoiled and skipped away from me, unable to see the hero through the disguise. I worked it to my advantage and ignored them.

I'd looked her up on a spur of the moment hunch, tracking down her room number in the campus directory.

What are you doing? my rational brain screams, but he's been a little sluggish on the draw since events from earlier in the day, calling to me behind a swirl of Vicodin. Most students are on their way to the cafeteria. I count on it to make the entry easy, that and stupid luck. Reckless, very reckless, Ikari.

I don't knock. That's when I know I'm really serious. I just try the knob gently and find it turns. Unlocked.

And no one's home. Success! a part of me registers, but it's the foolish and stoned one who's been floating on the painkiller cloud since the hospital escape. I hadn't bothered reading the back of the bottle, just taken four of them. It felt okay. Yeah. It felt real okay.

No worries man. Welcome to the lion's den.

There's too much stuff. And it's expensive, it's nice but, it doesn't really match and there's too much to fit in the room right. It feels like when she moved into the apartment with all those goddamned DHL boxes. What a pain. I giggle a little to myself, shutting the door behind me.

Closet. Underwear. I laugh a little more, feeling the blush work overtime to wind its way through my swollen cheeks. Shoes. Too many shoes. It's to be expected.

The bed is made up nicely. I try and avoid it, at least having the sense to try and leave the place the way it was when I came in.

Over to the desk. Still nothing. Just the laptop. Skim the files but it's all standard stuff. Open up the net, check history. Some gay porn. I smirk. But nothing _evil_. Disappointment. It's kind of classy gay porn. Nothing too obscene.

Keep going, the Vicodin whispers. Okay, I answer. Close the laptop. Running my hands over the smooth wood of the drawers under the desk. Something good trembles behind them.

And bingo.

Unexpected treasure. Prescription bottles like the ones my candy friends came in. I pick them up to my ear and shake, listening to the rattle.

"What are you?" I ask them softly.

"Pick your poison," I whisper, turning them over in my hand, checking the little white label.

Anti-anxiety and anti-depression. _That_ flubs me a breath. I was expecting Ritalin maybe, or something mundane. Antidepressants? Hmm. Back to the drawing board then, eh?

I put them back and close the desk drawer.

The door opens.

Uh oh.

"Hey—you! What the fuck are you doing in here?"

I spin on the voice and smile through the haze.

"Waiting for you," I lie, letting bravado and drugs carry the forcefulness I don't have.

That stops her a second. The rage simmers down to a milder boil.

"You didn't think to stay outside?" She lays the sarcasm thickly like a nice frosting on her hate cake.

Was expecting more of a straight "get the fuck out," really. Let's see how this one plays.

"It crossed my mind." It sounds sly rather than just stupid thanks to the froggish croak I'm still sporting.

She huffs and suddenly averts her eyes, like she's embarrassed.

"You look like shit," she says softly enough that's more pitied sounding than insulting.

"It's a new look for me," I admit.

She actually _laughs_ at that. I'm taken aback but I keep myself planted.

"Welcome to my life," she says, and I know she's not just talking about the dorm room. She's talking about the eye she'll never see out of again and the coweb scars crawling out of the socket. She's talking about the way people would stare in high school and not because of the fame. She's talking about the way she let her bangs get longer and longer, just so she could hide herself behind them when she wanted to. And she always wanted to.

The epitome of vanity had gotten her face mangled. I wanted to strangle the part of me that had once considered it poetic justice in his silent, bitter moments.

The moment hangs in the air. We're a pathetic looking pair. Me with my balloon head and blood-stained shirt. Her with her white eye and blue eye, scars like highways etched in a map, tracing their way up the bare flesh of her arm.

What are you doing? You know what she did.

"So, I guess you got the flowers."

"Dropped them," I say before I can catch myself.

"Sounds pretty typical of you," she snorts.

There it is. That's what I needed. Find the anger again. Now.

I advance on her, covering the distance in silence. She recoils back against the door, eye widening.

"Don't fuck around with me." The croak carries a menace my normal voice never could. I relish it.

She puffs herself up, suddenly finding her own reserves but stays silent, still uncertain of me. I lean in close, letting her eye take in the wretched view for all its worth until I can feel her pressing her scalp into the door to escape. Her breath is hot on my neck.

"I know what you did," I whisper. "And you're not going to get away with it."

She bares her teeth and shoves me forcefully. I stumble on the painkillers and trip into her closet, adding another lump to the back of my head. It doesn't feel so bad.

"What the fuck is your problem?" she snarls.

I laugh. It's a horrible noise with my raw throat. "Don't play stupid. I know they're covering for you. But I've got you figured," I say, waggling a mocking finger. "I saw the drip feed of drugs they've got you on. Sorry to say but none of those cure _crazy_."

Her anger turns cold and firm.

"Get out. Now."

"Or what?" I'm giggling, and Vicodin joy comes bubbling out of my mouth. "You'll kill me too?"

"_GET OUT!_"

She grabs me by the shirt and swings. It would work. Except the shirt was in tatters to begin with. It sheds free like eager snakeskin. She throws down the rags and I see her examining the curve of my new and healthy pecs. I've never felt so invincible.

I start to walk past her for the door, feeling huge and mountainous in my stony departure.

"Your truce is officially fucking o-v-e…" Her voice breaks down halfway.

I feel her hand on my shoulder now. "No, don't leave, Shinji," I imagine her tremulous voice, just like I've always fantasized.

Her screech comes instead. And the nails find purchase in my the skin of my shoulder, tearing with my momentum. Straight through the lance.

The lance.

I remember what I branded myself. I remember her eye. I remember what it must mean to her, suddenly seeing the object of her maiming, gleaming at her from the closeness of my skin.

The claws drag and wrench mercifully free just above my belt in time for me to gasp and yank open the door. I skid clear across the hall and into the other side with a thud.

Her scream still doesn't stop, just goes a little softer as her door bangs shut.

I gather myself off the carpet as a frightened looking freshman answers her door.

"Are—are you okay?" she says, awed, eyes blooming over the mess of my body.

"Yeah. Fine. Sorry 'bout the racket. I'm fine."

I'm fine. I'm an absolute bastard. I'm fine.

* * *

This is late. Haha. King of understatement. I also think it's delicious. It's beginning to build the conclusion, which I do actually have a vague plan for. I won't bother for excuses with this one. Yes I wrote it quickly. And yes I probably could have posted it sooner. But it wouldn't be the same. My life has been weird. I moved to New York recently. I'm on the verge of starting some serious work out of Hollywood (fingers crossed) and having my first original work published (fingers double-crossed.) I'm working on a script, a novel, three part-time jobs, and finding full-time employment along with housing I can afford. So before you guys think that I'm being ungrateful of all the wonderful attention this story has gotten, let me just say no, I'm just in the middle of big changes. Sometimes fanfiction is in the backseat. Sometimes it eats a whole evening, like tonight. 

I really do appreciate all of the wonderful words, even the slightly less wonderful ones. I would strongly encourage you that if you want me to try and keep this on the radar of my busy life, thoughtful and meaningful comments are your best ammunition. Particularly all of you who've yet to write one review.

And enough groveling for tonight. Peace. Love. Happiness. Don't confront your ex on drugs. That is the moral of this story (haha.)


	14. My road to hell

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

The rape of Mae Kaneko won't let me sleep at night

The rape of Mae Kaneko won't let me sleep at night. I toss and turn, fever dreams. Mae held down by her shadow attacker, Iyori leaning in the corner and watching. "Aren't you going to do something about it?" he asks me, but my feet move like lead weights, and someone is holding me from behind, no some_thing_ with _claws_ that catch in my back and rend the flesh. And the tear slowly down the spine with that sound like nails on a chalkboard. "Do something," I scream at Kurokawa. "I can't," he says, and flashes a smile, "I'm dead, remember."

I awake with a quick gasp. Yuki's eyes are already open, staring into mine. The clock blinks 3:00AM beside her.

"You were talking in your sleep again," she whispers to me, cupping a cheek. "Was it another nightmare?"

"I'm fine." Which is all the answer she needs. She knows something hasn't been right with me for a while. That something went wrong the day Daichi pulped my face and never quite went back. She caresses the scraped shoulder, fingers light over the scabs.

"You're going to be okay, right Shinji? I mean, you're gonna… we're gonna get through this. Right?"

Her voice is like a dust mote in the darkness, barely there, and riding unseen currents of air so every word sounds ready to fall to the floor.

I've stopped making love to her. I see Mae's panicked, gasping face every time I do. Gagged by his dirty fucking sock. With the bruises all over her arms where he held her down. We've done the surveillance; she isn't just making things up. Talking to her friends, they all say something's changed since that day and none of them know what it is.

Mae Kaneko. She used to be the light of the freshman class. Vice-president and pre-law, another in the line of Horaki overachievers. Now she's stopped going to student government meetings. She's failing three of her classes, and borderline on the other two. She doesn't eat regularly, and won't go out anymore, hardly leaving her room. She's terrified. Someone broke Mae Kaneko. She told us who.

Of course, we could report him to the campus authorities. But seeing as Mae has only told SEELE, we all know that will amount to nothing. She's not capable of coming forward herself. And without her to confirm the charges the accusation will be noted and dismissed. Nothing more. Reporting him to the campus, that's what the old me would do. You get in an extraordinary situation, you follow the protocol. Society tells you it's what you're supposed to do, that it's the moral thing, for him to be judged by his peers and appear in a court of law. But what if that system isn't working? What if what you're supposed to do and what's _right_ aren't the same thing anymore?

"Yuki, I'm a good person, right?"

"Of course you are," she says with a laugh. But her eyes don't. "Of course you are."

"If a good person does something bad, something that everyone tells you is wrong, but you _know_ it's the right thing to do, does that make you right? Does that make it okay?"

For a moment, it's as though her eyes tune in to the greater context. Even though Yuki knows nothing of SEELE or Mae Kaneko. For a moment, Yuki understands me and what I ask her perfectly.

"A great deal of what's 'right' and what's 'wrong' depends on point of view, Shinji. You may find that circumstance changes these from place to place and time to time. It's only stubborn absolutes that breed good and evil."

Place to place. Time to time. In another place, at another time.

"I've killed a lot of people," I whisper to her, feeling myself shiver in her arms. "I've killed more people than every serial killer on the planet put together. They didn't have to die. They were just following orders."

She pulls me deeper into her embrace and kisses my forehead.

"You did what you had to do," she explains for me. "They were soldiers. It was war."

"But, I," and I'm staring into my palm, slivers of moonlight dancing on the skin. It's faint and trembling in the dark. "I picked them up and I." These hands. Covered in myself, as I stood over her bed, sweating in relief. What a wet, disgusting feeling. Not so different from the gobs SSDF men sticking to my fingers. For Asuka. For revenge. "I liked it," I confess. "I liked the way it felt."

She runs her hands through my hair and I sob silently, convulsing in the darkness.

I'm going to kill Mae Kaneko's rapist. I've made up my mind and I mourn his looming death.

* * *

**Fourteenth Revolution: My road to hell was paved with good intentions.**

* * *

"I'm dropping the charges."

"What?" Misato's incensed.

"I'm _dropping_ the charges."

"What do you mean you're 'dropping the charges?'"

"It's over, Misato. I don't want Daichi going to jail for it. It was an emotional thing, he overreacted, it's past now."

"_Overreacted_? Shinji he gave you a _concussion _and two broken ribs, not to mention the stitches and the missing teeth. They had to drag him off of you and you were _out_, unconscious. If Section Two hadn't been there…"

That was the real problem. Just how had Section Two gotten there so quickly? If they already had access to the inside of the campus, there was really no place let for me to hide. I needed something, some buffer to let me keep snooping on Kurokawa. If Section Two picked up any whiff of what I was onto, that would be the end of it. I'd be shut down, all my hard work put to waste.

"It's _over_. I already called the police and explained I wouldn't be testifying and that I wanted the charges dropped. He's getting released this afternoon."

Little did I know I'd just signed Daichi Matsuba's death sentence. I had other things on my mind. If I'd been able to think a little clearer, perhaps he might have lived. Good intentions. They're a motherfucker.

"You—" For a moment, I've put her at a loss for words. Things haven't been so good between us lately but she's still not used to arguing with me this way. "God_damn_ it, Shinji Ikari. You _do not_ go fucking around with an open Section Two investigation. Period."

Was that a veiled threat? It's impossible to tell. Asuka could have told them I was on to her, if she didn't let her pride get in the way. But for now I'm betting they're still in the dark. Maybe she did get away with it after all? Too many questions still, not enough answers.

"He's eighteen years old, Misato. I'm not going to put him in jail. He's just a kid—"

"_You're_ just a kid. I wish you'd remember that every once in a while."

I swallow a few ugly things I have in reply for that. Wait for her to end the conversation. I hear the gears turning in her head, as she works over her own anger.

"Look, I want you to do something as a favor to me. I don't know what it was you said to her but, I want you to stay away from Asuka for a while."

That shouldn't be too much of a problem. Not at all.

"Shinji… she says you _scared_ her. Asuka. Scared _Asuka_…" she repeats, letting it sink in. "What the hell did you do to her?"

"Nothing. She's losing it," I rattle off quickly, nervous at where this inquiry is going. It's hard to tell. Is Misato just milking me for information or is she really in the dark? Impossible to know, she could be just playing me.

"She won't tell me what it was…" she ponders out loud. "Look, I don't know what's going on with you two but, I want you to be careful around her. She's—I know this sounds crazy Shinji but, she's fragile. More than you'd think."

I let it hang, swallowing a guilty lump in my throat. I'm fine. It's fine.

I let a shaky hand find its way to the Vicodin bottle in my desk. Two empty, orange carcasses of used prescriptions lay beside it in the mess. Neck injuries take a long time to heal.

I pop the lid with one hand, a practiced thumb that's gotten used to the repetition of this motion. Toss the pill in and dry swallow, holding the phone away from the noise. Just in case.

"Shinji… are you… is everything okay? Is there something you need to talk to me about? Is something wrong, Shinji?"

"Nah," I say, when my voice returns. "No, everything's fine. I gotta go."

"Okay. I love y—"

"Bye."

Click.

Hand shivering on the desk. Tonight's the night. That's what it is. It's just the nerves. Just the nerves. I'm fine.

* * *

"This isn't right," Kazu insists. He's been repeating it ever since I brought up the idea for discussion.

It's a simple plan really. We sneak into his dorm—he has a single, which makes things less complicated. Touji gives him a good tap on the head. Kensuke and I grab him, and we take him to the roof. It's only one floor above him. When he's coming to, we explain that the four masked fellows he sees know all about Mae Kaneko; we dangle him over the roof, Kensuke and I, while we get him to confess on the recorder to the rape. We hold him there and explain exactly what will happen to him if he doesn't leave the campus in one week: that the tape goes to the police. And maybe he lives long enough to find out what they will do with him.

Then, once we have the confession we want, we make to pull him back over the edge. My arm seizes up, and my grip slips. It's the neck injury and my hand's locked up. Before Touji can come hand help, I lose my grip. Taki falls. It's an accident.

If they can cover it up for her, they can cover it up for me. They'll have to.

It's not our fault, I'll explain. We were just trying to get him to confess only it went wrong. Nothing will happen to Touji and Kensuke of course. She can't put them at the scene without me anyways. Then it all disappears. Just like Kurokawa.

It's not wrong. It's justice. Touji and Ken will never know I intended it to go down that way. I can live with the rest. It'll be chalked up as a suicide, stress-related. They'll find the Vicodin I planted in his desk, see he was abusing drugs and that his grades weren't so hot. That will be the end of it.

Does it matter that he's the fourth-year who took a swing at me in Kensuke's art show? That this _animal_ was at one time sleeping with Asuka? Maybe between stalking Mae? It shouldn't. No it's not like I'm _jealous_ or something. It's not like I'm trying to send _her_ a message. It's not like he did it to Asuka. No, it's not like he imagined Asuka pinned beneath him, screaming for him to get off. Screaming for more. Screaming my name. I feel dizzy.

It's justice, I remind myself. This is for Mae, not her.

"This isn't right," Kazu says, and he eyes the rest of us wearily. It's midnight and we sip at our beers cautiously, circled round the couch in my living room. Taki is just a few floors above us, getting ready to go to sleep.

"This is the only way," I repeat. It's been my mantra since I first suggested the idea. Calmly, rationally I explained how he would get away with it unless we did something like this. This way he leaves campus, we have the confession taped just in case, as I'd argued so many times previously. As for the drop, it was a decision I'd come to late in the planning. I had Yuki to thank for my resolve.

We're all in black, masks sitting in a pile on one end of the couch. It's all stuff purchased under the names of our three ghost members, untraceable to the last. Touji and Kensuke cast a weary glance at Kazu, who paces the room like a caged panther.

"I don't like it," he mutters into his beer. "What if something goes wrong?"

I sigh an exaggerated sigh, covering my excitement. Oh but something _will_ go wrong. Not trusting myself to answer, I depart to the bathroom and shut the door on Touji repeating the arguments we've all reasoned out for the past week.

I pop two Vicodin from my pocket, checking that I still have enough to plant in Taki's desk. I knock them back with a long drag on the beer. I finish the beer and stagger a little towards the sink, feeling my stomach churn with the fresh alcohol.

In the mirror, a bloodshot, bruised face is looking back at me. The black eyes are just charcoal smears on the tops of my cheeks now. The cut in my lip nearly invisible, a red sore in the corner of my mouth. The stitches in my ear are fading back into the flesh. The monster face who'd taunted Asuka is almost gone, and the frog in his throat has long since departed. Except for the sleep-deprived eyes the face in the mirror looks almost normal. Almost.

I feel myself reaching for the doorknob. The argument in the living room has picked up volume.

"No, I never liked it from the beginning. I thought you guys would back out at some point but, I can see now you're not going to." Kazu turns to me, hands on hips. "I'm out. I'm fucking _out_. You guys don't need more than three people anyways."

His face is hard. He won't be convinced.

My face is slack with drugs, betraying none of the springs coiling tight around my inner doubts and tensions.

"Fine, you're out," I parrot.

He's right. We don't need him. And I'd rather have him not be there if he's not behind it one-hundred-percent. All his talk of accidents has been making me edgy anyways.

His grimace is set, face a little red with the anger of it. "I can't believe it. You're really going to do this." He's staring at me, a little incredulous. Kensuke and Touji watch us hawkishly.

"It's the only way." It's the only way. It's the only way.

Disgusted. "Fine." He slams the beer into the trash. "I'm heading over to Mitsuki's. I'll see you guys _later_." He turns without another word and exits, slamming the front door as he does.

Kensuke and Touji turn to me with worried looks. I can see the nails on Kensuke's fingers, bitten all the way down. Touji keeps screwing and unscrewing his arm, just like I would see him do before a big game in highschool. I try and muster my cool.

"Don't worry about him. It's just the nerves getting the better of him. He knows, just like you guys do. This guy is a monster. We have to get him off campus before he hurts someone else. We're doing the right thing."

"The right thing," Kensuke echoes emptily.

* * *

The stairs are near silent under our slippers. Kensuke's cut the lights to the floor minutes earlier. But it doesn't matter as no one's out in the hall. And all those on late hours are off at the big end-of-semester parties happening around campus. Our timing isn't accidental. Taki thinks he's taking a quick nap before starting off his night full of partying.

With the ski masks and identical uniforms, I can only tell Kensuke and Touji apart by size. Something in me is screaming that it was a mistake to bring them along, that I shouldn't be getting them involved in this, that I'm betraying the friendship. It's just the nerves, I remind myself.

Just the nerves.

We enter the hall, padded soles making hardly a swish on the carpet. We slow to a crawl as we near his end.

Then we're at his number. I nod to Touji as Kensuke and I place ourselves on either side of the door, ready to rush. We're really doing this? I ask myself, wondering just what it is that I've made my friends and I into. But they trust me.

I'd be lying to pretend that SEELE had been just as much their idea as mine. Sure, we went about things democratically, but I'd always been the driving force behind it. They trust me, I realize, trust me enough to think we can pull this off. And maybe we could. If I wasn't planning on letting Taki taste pavement from six stories up.

Once this night is over, they will never trust me again. But maybe that's okay. Maybe, for Mae, it's worth it.

Right and wrong. Time and place.

I give Touji the signal. The titanium foot slams into the door hand with a crack and it goes flying in. That's faster than I expect and I have to scramble to get to the bed.

I trip over his clothes, sliding in the mess and slamming into the foot of the bed. Kensuke's just behind me, fumbling in the darkness. Touji makes a big swing for the pillow with his unscrewed arm. And instead of the solid thunk of flesh, I hear the woosh of pillow.

Through the gloom I see Taki's bed is empty.

"Fuck," Touji says, backing off and panting with exertion. "Where the fuck is he? Where did he go?"

All three of us turn at the scream, my hair standing up on the back of my neck. It's a quick sound, cut short by a loud thump. Not a natural sound. Not the revelry of a student who's had one too many. There was real fear in it. Cautiously, I peer out the window and down into campus. There's a body at the foot of our building.

"The roof!" I snarl, and we flush out of the room, not bothering to shut the door. We sprint for the closest stairwell. I'm taking the flight three steps at a time. My heart pounds behind a Vicodin sludge, heavy and angry in my chest.

Slamming into the roof access but not bothering to cut the alarm properly, the door pops open with a wail. Security will be on its way now. The roof is empty as we dash for the railing. Our masks off, red faced, we slow as we reach the edge.

There's the body, no doubt now, a few confused students milling around him now.

I examine the twisted pieces, limbs all turned around and facing unnatural directions. Even from here, I can clearly see the profile of Taki Iwamura's face in the lake of blood spreading out from beneath him.

* * *

This one's for anyone who's ever felt unappreciated. I don't know how this will come off you guys, honestly I don't. Sometimes I wonder if you guys will think I've gone off the deep end for this one. Is it too much? I don't think so. Emotions aren't just a chapter by chapter occurrence. They come like a big fucking snowball, and once they get going they take a while to work their way down the mountain. I think what you really have to be asking yourself at this point is how much can you trust Shinji as a narrator? The emotions he's experiencing are vital to understanding this. And either you get them and you empathize or you don't. Hopefully, if I'm doing this right, it should be both surprising _and_ believable.

And I know I'm a bastard for the ending, but hey, you got a quick update this time around. Who knows maybe chapter fifteen will come riding in on a silver chariot. Hah. Well, we can all dream at least, right?


	15. My New Year's Resolution

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

He was pushed

He was pushed. Don't kid yourself.

I plunk a Vicodin into the eggnog and reassess myself in the mirror. Outside Misato's apartment, it snows, a mournful, slow dance of white petals illuminated in shades of orange by the steady glow of the metropolis. As the cool white of the tablet is swallowed up by the heavily rummed concoction, I take a good long look at myself.

Does Shinji Ikari stare back at me?

Perhaps.

A Shinji Ikari sporting something of Kaji's five-o'clock shadow. A Shinji Ikari, whose once immaculately pressed school uniform now stands replaced by the tatters of a soiled and unbuttoned dress shirt, so unlike its previous incarnation as to be all but a distant wardrobe cousin. A Shinji Ikari who's just an inch shy of six feet at standing, no longer dwarfed by Misato, by Section Two, by anyone it seems. His face is drawn and pale. Where once you could spot a nervous empathy in his eyes they now hold a different gaze. Behind their faint blue coloration, the long dormant genetic inheritance of my mother's half-Japanese mother, something malignant lingers, a distrust in place of innocence.

Misato said I looked "older" as I was getting out at the station, weak smile held on her lips as she fought back proud tears. I gave her a quick desultory laugh and shot her a look. If only you knew, dear.

In hindsight, bringing Yuki home for Christmas was a bit brash, though she and Misato seemed to be on something of the same wavelength. It was a snap decision, made spur of the moment in one of those Vicodin doldrums blanking out the pain and anxiety of my heart as the semester burned to its abrupt end. One of those quick utterances during what I liked to call my "murk times," when I forgot the horrible and misplaced guilt in my heart over Taki Iwamura's "suicide." The invitation had simply jumped out, faster than the pace of my sedated brain, free, heedless. Jumped out, just like they said Taki did.

"Of course you can stay. We've got plenty of room."

Had it only been spatial concerns to contend with, we might have managed, even given the hasty after-the-fact notification to Misato. A NERV Commander made for quite a hefty pad in the city, one surely accommodating enough for just _one_ extra visitor. _One_ of course being the key variable there.

But even the sprawling luxury of her penthouse suite seemed constricting tonight, as I look out on the Tokyo skyline and its huddled skyscrapers, dusted lightly by the flurries.

Had I known Kaji was also going to be around for the vacation, I might have reconsidered. Had I known Asuka was hellbent on seeing him again for her break, I might have well booked a flight for the two of us and skipped town without another word.

But of course Misato had "plenty of rooms to spare," and I was not going to let myself be seen as running away from _her_. Yuki could sense the tension in the air but she let it go unmentioned, generally enjoying Misato's boisterous attitudes and Kaji's excessive flirtation with much good humor. She seemed to miss her family, but other than that, was content to spend some time out of school just being with me.

And Asuka, in turn, had thankfully chosen the bedroom furthest from Yuki and I without much eventfulness. In fact, she'd remained impressively scarce for the entirety of the break. She was often disappearing early in the morning off to go shopping with Kaji, never taking her meals at home, and generally staying the hell away from the two of us. Other than her arrival and one chance, silent encounter passing each other in the living room after midnight, we'd seen nothing of each other.

But now…

A dinner party. Of all things, a fucking _dinner party_. What the hell, it's the holidays

I plop another Vicodin in, and just for fun, another of the anxiety meds and slosh my witch's brew down, relishing the warmth, the sweetness, and the dull throb it put in my heart. It's a party right? So party.

The doctor had been good. One of the high-end clinics in the city. Very private. Misato had arranged the meeting. _"Judging by everything Misato has told me, I'm pretty sure you're just experiencing a little end of the year stress. Nothing to be worried about."_

As I peer over the lip of the windows, I imagine Taki Iwamura's screaming body plummeting the forty-plus stories down to the pavement, the impact a red cherry blossom on white powder. At this height, he'd have to be collected for the funeral in trash bags. Nothing like his cracked open skull, leaking his brains out onto the front steps of the senior dorms.

"_She also made mention, though I don't think we need to worry too much, about some possible post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. Do you feel like you've been under a lot of stress lately?"_

_Kaji with that languid stare. "Been seeing a lot of nothings lately?"_

I turn back to the mirror, and—I'm proud—don't even flinch as the body of Daichi swings back and forth, daggling from his self-fashioned noose on the showerhead. They found him in the gym locker room after Kendo practice. Just like that.

_The doctor flashes me one of those big meaningless grins. "That's great, Shinji! Well just in case, we're going to prescribe you a little something for your anxiety. Nothing too serious mind you, but you want to be careful about taking it regularly and of course, you should tell me if you notice_ _any drug interactions with the pain medications you're currently on. It goes without saying alcohol is off limits, right? Very good."_

I raise my emptied glass to the blue and bloated hallucination. "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, motherfucker," I whisper.

Back in the mirror, the pupils of Shinji Ikari dilate and dilate and dilate.

* * *

**Fifteenth Revolution: My New Year's Resolution: be honest.**

* * *

Coming back out of the bathroom, the sounds of pleasant conversation and cutlery float up to me through a thickened fog, as if I've just put a layer of carpet around my ears. And my eyes. And my tongue. It's like someone turned the gravity down on the room. How glorious.

Some of that horrible pressure, the confines of the apartment, the strangers, all bearing down on me, flutters away, as I step lightly back towards the carnival.

A trophy wife passes me on the way to the bathroom, brief hello. Short skirt. Lingering eyes. I shoot her a long smile and manage to catch the drool dribbling out of my loose lips before I find myself at the top of the staircase.

There it is. Misato's living room, roiling with high-level NERV staff and well-to-do businessmen. Kaji making crude jokes over by the windows. Misato in that low-cut dress telling some highly sanitized combat story. A room full of mostly thirty-somethings laughing and drinking, chattering away. A little jazz piano in the background.

Misato: gone high class. Who woulda thunk?

Shit! That last step of the staircase seems longer than the rest. As I teeter and regain a some semblance of balance, I watch caterers drift by on unseen currents in the storm, silver trays stacked high with sushi like desperate galleons in a typhoon, waylaid by the breaking waves of hungry guests. To my right Maya cradles a martini and looks wonderfully uncomfortable out of her uniform. That beautiful post-doc rides on her arm, the blonde with the nice breasts. It was kind of cute that she was out now, NERV getting to show off its equal opportunity employer status and all that. She shoots me a friendly glance through the strange faces, offering a little wave of her glass. She knows I feel just about as out of place as she does.

I might return that smile. I don't know. I can't really feel my face anymore.

Can't really…

"Shinji!"

Yuki sprawls into view, wearing the dress I helped her pick out. I think I must gawk at how good it looks on her because she laughs and pecks me on the cheek.

"I just talked to the VP of Sony! He says he'd love to have me do some modeling, the two of us actually you see but…"

And I'm off. Not completely—I give the requisite nod when I see it's needed but my mind is elsewhere, specifically just over her left shoulder. Through the floor to ceiling windows, a lone redhead stands with her back to me, regarding the view from the open-air terrace, draped across the barrier. Snow caresses this distant figure, a picture of loneliness. My eyes drink in the swirling vision. Vicodin writes poems of this moment, whispers of fragility and sadness that murmur up passed the dulled conversation of the moment.

"Isn't that just great?" Yuki's wrapping up. I try and salvage what little I can recall.

"Not letting some damn CEO scoop you up and ship you off to covers of magazines… half-nekkid… tryin' to get in on the… Mine!" I growl, throwing up my arms to clutch at her.

She giggles and shoves me away playfully. "My my, so jealous already are we? Well, don't look over there… I said _don't_!" she squeals, grabbing my cheeks away and thrusting my vision back at her cleavage. "_He_ was hitting on me earlier! I _know_, can you_ believe_ it? And he's like _forty_ too, yuck!"

"You're drunk, aren't you?" I say, waggling a finger at her.

She blushes. "A little," she admits, looking scolded.

"That's my girl!" I go in for a kiss but fall short, plowing into the low neckline on her dress. A few of my fellow guests roar their delight at my open and very accidental debauchery as Yuki gasps then spins and quickly tucks me into a mighty headlock. Suddenly that eggnog isn't seeming like such a bright idea.

"Payback," she announces triumphantly. A few others cheer her on.

Misato notices and pretends to speak into her wrist. "Looks like we have a security situation over by the cheese plate. One pilot, fully disabled, requesting back up."

The rest of the crowd joins in with their laughter at the little gag. It's the kind of stuff those two have been doing to me all week. Normally I'd laugh along a bit at my emasculation but I'm too busy chocking on the aftertaste of eggnog and embarrassment. Yuki must realize I'm going a little green in the nook of her elbow because she lets me go swiftly and still manages to catch me before I plummet into the carpet. She lifts me back up on unsteady legs and cradles me against her. For a moment I feel just how thin the dress is, how light and delicate its material.

"You look sick," she murmurs as she presses closer against me, arousal clearly visible in her flushed cheeks. "I didn't hurt you, did I? I'm sorry."

"'Sokay, eggnog not sitting too well." I wheeze. "Think I need a breath of fresh air."

The room begins to do a slow pirouette around me. My cocktail in the bathroom puts its motion to an easy lilt, like riding the bobbing chariot of some merry-go-round. All around me unfamiliar faces press in, stealing glances, whispering to one another. All talking. Laughing even. At me. Laughing at what a buffoon I am. How I'm so utterly bested by my girlfriend. How she's so much more talented as a socialite, so much more polite, in key with their little social nuances. They whisper jokes to one another about my awkwardness, how shy and immature I am, how very out of sync.

Not like Yuki. Not like Asuka.

Asuka's been wooing the crowd all night, prancing through their conversations, laughing at all the right times, smiling all around. Shaking hands, and trading business cards. Asuka. So doted upon and loved. The foreigner. So completely different from me. The _likable_ pilot.

I watched her run the room better than even Misato can, pivoting on those high heels, strutting around like some runway model. She knows everyone's name it seems. And I. I know nobody.

The faces others guide into my view fade almost as quickly as their introductions, their nervous chatter, stumbling through moments of my past I'd rather not recall, certainly not with strangers. These fucking wretched people. So Ignorant. They have no idea how close they came to being wiped away with all the rest of the planet. No idea what price we paid to give them breath another day.

It's like walking into my old classroom all over again, everyone's eyes bearing down on me as I stutter my introduction. Laughing at me, silently laughing at how utterly boring and stupid I am. The way they press in on me, when they discover I'm a pilot. All those pleasant encouragements, all those false compliments, so devoid of the jokes they made about me earlier, so totally insincere, just looking to grab a snatch of my notoriety for themselves, like vultures, picking and prodding at the corpse of Shinji Ikari, great… white… vultures, descending from the sky…

"Shinji!" Yuki's whisper is urgent. "Didn't you hear me? Are you okay? Your heart is pounding."

I swallow the bile that had been edging its way up my throat, getting ready to spew over all these well-groomed people and their cocktails.

"Well," I improvise, running a fleet hand over her ass. "This dress sure isn't helping."

Satisfied with my answer, she kisses me once on the neck, not long enough to draw any real attention.

"Tonight," she moans just barely as her lips part.

Then she slips away into the crowd, gone. Feeling my anchor depart me in this sea of leering faces, that subtle pressure returns, pressing down.

They all want a piece of you, just one… little… piece. But what happens when they've all had their taste, when you're filleted and there's none of you left to go around. Who will want you then? Will you ever be wanted again? By anyone?

I find myself at the door to the balcony trailing a wake of dinner guests I plowed through while feigning politeness.

"Shinji, there's someone I want you to meet."

I lurch, feeling the room spin me around. Kaji's guiding hand on my shoulder abruptly falls away as he looks into my eyes. The unmistakable panic that must be there.

"Maybe later then," he says quickly before my open mouth can offer up a reply. Which is good because I'm no longer so sure what's on offer. Puke stew, maybe.

There's something weird about being on a lot of Vicodin. It's like the world has this momentum to itself, suddenly this inertia that you can feel, and you just get tired of working against it. You succumb to whatever it has in store for you.

I lean into the door for the balcony, nearly falling as it swings open. Outside the wind is gusting, the snow is picking up, and everyone else has fled from the storm. I see her there, all alone, staring out over the city, leaning on her elbows.

For the strangest moment I imagine how easy it would be to tip her over the side. One little push. My head swims. And swims.

Then I'm at the railing, making the most pained retching sounds. I feel her in my periphery as she jumps back, startled by my sudden movement. Then the bark and moan as the vomit soars into the night.

For a while, my pained whimpers and purging fill her horrified silence. Then.

"You're drunk." It sounds almost… sad.

Suddenly I feel her, one arm wrapped around my back, one delicate hand pressed on my forehead, lifting me as the rest of the hors d'oeuvres eject themselves from my shaking body. I feel the tears come pouring out too as the acid leaps and burns at my throat.

"_Verdammt_, Shinji." For a moment, those tender hands seem almost to caress. "Baka," she says, barely louder than the falling snow.

I wipe at the snot and tears streaming down my face. "I'm sorry," I mutter, feeling the convulsions come to a halt. "I'm sorry."

As I wipe further at the shame and embarrassment, I feel the hands withdraw. Reluctantly? And a little sigh.

"I wish you'd take better care of yourself. You're not invincible you know."

"Not like you right?" Why am I angry? I shouldn't be angry. She… took care of me.

The venomous reply never comes.

"None of us are," she says, looking back out to the cityscape. I can hear my hearbeat, reverberating through my opened mouth. All of the nasty things I'd wanted to say in return die inside my throat, subsiding like the burning itch of the stomach acid.

Weakness. Asuka revealing weakness. To me?

Why?

I watch her solemn face regard the night, watch the way the wind and snow play with that hair. I realize, feeling another kind of ache in my throat, she looks incredibly beautiful just now, the faint glow of Tokyo's lights on her skin. The red hair as it gets kicked up again and again, buffeted by the storm. Her face so distant, transfixed on the skyline. I feel my hand reaching its way up to run my fingers through that auburn majesty.

"I hate those people," she mutters to me. "All they want from us is more. I _hate_ them. Their fake smiles. Their condescending little laughs. How they look at me when they think my back is turned. I. Hate. Them."

I see her hand trembling on the railing. So unlike the perfect socialite of earlier in the evening. No longer lying, vulnerable and real as I am.

I want to tell her I understand. I want to put my arms around her and cry. I want to tell her that we aren't so different.

I want to…

"Aren't you supposed to be with that _harlot_ right now?"

Of course she saw us, melting in each other's arms. The windows behind us are huge, the whole party is visible from here. How could she not have seen. How could she not be jealous? And yet, even as I know these things, something else denies them. Reminds me how awful she has been, how awful she can be.

My hand falters, drops away before it can complete the journey. Somewhere inside me, ramparts are manned, battlestations, battlestations, battlestations…

"Quite a word to be throwing around with the number of guys you've been with this semester…" Another Vicodin-freed utterance escapes. The inertia. The inertia of the moment, carrying me forward. I don't want to but… I can't stop.

"_What?_" She turns on me, violence welling up in the taught muscles of her face.

"Not exactly like you have good taste either. Like that Iwamura chump. The scumbag I laid out during Kensuke's shindig, right? Oh yeah." I roll my eyes. "_Real_ catch he was." It trickles out with a faint chuckle.

She slaps me. Once. Hard. I nearly slip on the snow underfoot. As the sting sets in I glance sideways and feel relieved to see the party inside seems oblivious to our two unlit figures on the terrace.

"You wouldn't know anything about being a _real_ man," she fires off under her breath, huffing great white plumes into the air. It's an old favorite of hers. Only now it's almost too easy. I know all your lines dear; so played out you've become.

"Yeah, well your 'real man' had something on the side. But I guess you knew that." I watch her features hike up in surprise. Or maybe she didn't know. But then it none of it makes sense, does it? She has to know. Otherwise, who killed him? "Don't play coy. I'm sure you figured it out by now…" No! What are you doing? Don't… "How he forced himself on Mae. Guess that's why he pancaked himself too. Assuming you didn't get to him first."

Another cat out of the bag, set free by insobriety. Forgive me, Mae.

"What are you talking about?" There's a strange falter in her shrieking voice. It's then that I notice Asuka Langley Souryu is crying. _Crying_. "He… he wouldn't do something like _that_. It was… it was an accident," she whimpers but, underneath the tears she looks up to me, searching for reassurance.

"Suuuuure… it was an 'accident.' You took him up there to threaten him over Mae." I'm stalking towards her now.

She backs up, until she's pressed against the railing. Cornered. I grab her shoulders, leaning her just a little over the edge.

"Maybe you've got a weapon or maybe he's just scared. Scared you'll tell."

"_What the fuck are you talking about!?_" she screeches through the tears, taking the time for one panicked glance down to the street below.

"It doesn't take much. You're pretty strong after all. One. Quick. Shove." I push her for emphasis. She screams and grabs my arms to balance herself, terrified.

"I don't even blame you," I admit, drawing her into something like a hug for my whispering. "He _was _a scumbag. All I want to know. Is what. The _FUCK_. Did Kurokawa do to make you push him under the train? What the _FUCK_. Did Daichi do? Other than stand up to me?" I realize then that I'm snarling, inches away from that widened blue eye. My voice turns to a whine. "That's all I want to know, Asuka. _Why?_ Why them? What could they possibly do to deserve that?"

"Kaji!" She bolts from my grasp, running back to the doorway and plowing into him, sobbing. He's only just opening the door to the terrace.

"Asuka?" I hear the astonishment in his voice before he looks up. The cold in those eyes I will never forget. They read easily:_ You hurt someone I love Shinji Ikari, and I don't take that lightly._ Behind the wall of windows closing off the terrace, I see the dinner party has stuttered to a halt on our drama. People either stare at her weeping figure or politely into their glass. Somewhere, from within that crowd, I can feel Misato's burning eyes on me.

* * *

"I don't care what the argument was about."

The desiccated remains of the dinner party's aftermath surround us.

"I really don't."

Plates full of half-eaten tuna rolls.

"It's not even important."

Glasses of half-drunk champagne.

"The only thing you need to understand…"

Forgotten olives, soaked in Martini mix.

"Is that you can't keep doing this to her, whatever it is."

Ruffled, misplaced pillows. Lone butter knives. A handkerchief. Auld Lang Syne drones mirthlessly somewhere behind our dragging conversation. And just like in the department stores, all the guests have up and left. The night is over, the new year has arrived.

"Look." Misato leans in. "Asuka's on medication, Shinji. I guess there's no further point in hiding that from you. She isn't… stable." Something draws my gaze to hers on that word. Are we really playing this game? Now of all times? I know she did it Misato, no matter how you euphemize it. She killed those boys. "She's been having a rough time at school and…" She searches. "And she's going through some tough things."

My headache is back. Always seems to come around when the Vicodin wears low. Probably have to take another to get a good night's sleep.

"Shinji. Are you listening to me?"

"Yes."

"Shinji, I need you to leave Asuka alone for a while, okay. Until…" Until she's tired of killing people. "Until she's feeling better."

And Kaji's striding back into the room.

"She's asleep now," he says with finality, exhaling as he falls into the couch beside Misato. He puts an arm around her, worried face looking somewhere out into the Tokyo night.

Asuka spent the rest of the evening hiding in her room. I spent the rest hiding upstairs, watching television and studiously avoiding conversation or eye contact with Yuki.

"She's really torn up inside over what she did…" I try to keep my eyes from widening as I look over to him. "She keeps going on about…" Would they really tell me? Why not? It _is_ Misato's apartment, probably the one place guaranteed not to be bugged by anyone other than Section Two. The only place more secure was down in Central Dogma. "About some hospital, something she said. To you, maybe?" He's looking to me to answer now.

_My tears. Tears of joy as she wakes up. I can't help myself, falling down onto her. She's alive. Somehow, somehow I saved her. Somehow she survived. Weeping thanks into those vacant blue eyes, wrapped around her on that hospital bed._

"_You disgust me," she whispers, as my sobbing slows._

_And the moment shatters. Everything, every emotion I'd saved up, comes crashing down on my head. Detonating. All the things I did to save her. Those horrible things. Worth it for one moment, and ruined the next. How could she say that to you? To you whom she owes everything. The little bitch. She's, she's just like your father. Your father. Your father._

_My hands, closing around that little neck. Her startled eyes, full of fear. She gags._

_The orderlies charging in. They have to beat me just to get me off of her._

"Do you know what she's talking about?" he asks, looking hard into my eyes.

I see Misato freeze on this. She knows. Her, a few hospital staff, and a few members of Section Two. Another in a long list of state secrets. One of the pilots tried to strangle the other one. Attempted murder. My gaze flickers between the two of them.

"No idea."

"It's not important," Misato cuts in, jumpy to change the subject. "She's upset and she's babbling. What's important is that you give her some space Shinji, leave her alone for a while. Okay? I'm asking you."

"It's not my fault," I mutter, letting my head fall back into my hands. "She picks fights and then she can't handle it."

Somewhere on the coffee table a martini glass is flung and shatters.

"Would you just… stop being such a gigantic _ass_ for a moment, Shinji Ikari," Misato says, barely in control of her voice.

I look up wanting to say something angry in response, but Misato and Kaji both just look sad. As if they pity me.

"She _loves_ you, you idiot." The crash of the glassware rings in my ears. "And it's killing her to see you with someone that makes you happy the way she never could, the way she would never let herself."

Daisuke, I always took him for being so ignorant.

"_So I guess you two are already—"_

"_We're not."_

Misato's impossible assertion.

"_You just remind me so much of… us."_

Rei's simple insight.

"_You cause each other this pain because you share a bond that will not break."_

Her written note.

"_If you hurt him, I'll kill you."_

Confronting her, in her room.

"_So I guess you got the flowers."_

"Of course she's picking fights with you. It's the only thing she knows how to do."

"Shinji," Kaji starts. "Asuka didn't go to college because she had to. She didn't even really want to get a second degree. She went because _you_ did. Now all she can do is feel guilty about some fight you guys had or feel jealous that you're with someone who's truly good for you. It's eating her up on the inside."

I'm shaking my head. It's all too much. I can't believe this. Because it's what I've always wanted?

"You don't understand…" I start to say.

"No, Shinji," Misato interrupts me. "We do. Kaji and I did the exact same thing. Because we were young like you. And we didn't know any better." They share the briefest of smiles. "It's obvious, Shinji. The only person who can't see it is you."

"That's just the way it works with these things," Kaji adds.

"We want you both to be happy, whatever you end up doing. Just give her time, give yourselves a chance to grow up a little more. Okay?"

"Okay," I parrot, numb with it all.

I get up to go. Kaji and Misato look at each other closely, hands clasped. Perhaps weighing whether or not they said the right thing. As I somehow pull myself off the couch and turn to leave, I see her for just a moment, there at the top of the stairs. She's been listening to every word.

Yuki.

Some new awful feeling twists another shameful knife into me. But I can't bring myself to turn back for those stairs, walk up those flights, give her eavesdropping away totally. Or try and explain the tremble in my voice. Or all the other confusing questions this conversation must have brought her. My guilt dawns slowly, filling me with each footstep back to our room.

Much later, when I'm in bed, she finally tiptoes through the doorway. She lays down on the farthest edge of the matress wordlessly, doing her best to avoid touching me. I feel that awful pain lurking in the sheets between us, filling up that gap.

"Yuki, I—"

"—It's okay."

She turns away and pretends to go to sleep. Hopes that I couldn't see her eyes red from crying. And I know. I know it's not okay.

* * *

Thus ends the third arc of the story. I hope you have enjoyed it so far. Many thanks to all the encouragement, advice, and support you guys have offered. Particularly Fresh C this time around, for getting my head back in the game. Much love and respect to all my readers still following the story. Your insightful reviews have really helped more than you can possibly know. Every time I've been feeling down on myself, I go back to read your comments and they lift me up all over again.

To be honest, life has thrown me into a little bit of my own Mae Kaneko situation. I won't get into details but I've had to make some hard, scary decisions. And I don't know if they were the right ones. Sometimes I wish I could be as brave as Shinji. And maybe sometimes I do live up to that. I ask that you keep me and my friend in your prayers during this difficult time.

I hope I'm still living up to your expectations. I promise there are more good things yet to come.


	16. I thought I was loved

**Neon Genesis Evangelion**

**My Own Personal Revolution**

"_So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?_

_So you think you can love me and leave me to die?_

_No, baby_

_Can't do this to me baby_

_Just gotta get out_

_Just gotta get right outta here"_

_--Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody_

There are no sirens. The sky is blue, summer has come. I don't think I'll taste much more of this one's warmth. The cicadas have hesitated and for once there's silence. The gunshot threw off their rhythm. Now everything slows to the dwindling beat of my heart.

I was wrong. I was so wrong. Oh, Asuka, forgive me. I tried to stop it.

But maybe this is right. It seemed to fit. It seemed a kind of justice. Because he was right about us.

How I ruined it. I ruined all of it.

* * *

—ascending the shaft! Using his AT Field as some kind of—

—advised, first unit surfacing, exit trajectory—

—power severed, the internal clock should be—

And on, the crackle-rasp of radio intercepts.

They never saw it coming.

I halved the first and third tank battalions in my first thirty seconds topside, rending mountainsides in my squall of fury. I buried an artillery compliment shortly thereafter.

The navy, which had suffered under the previous devastation of Battleship Nigeru being used as a parasol for the missile downpour on Unit 02's emergence and its further flinging, rupturing its structural integrity so that its ammunition reserves discharged in one walloping _whoomfKRECKOOWW_—_that Navy_, probably thought they'd already experienced the worst sort of combat losses they'd ever receive in the history of their existence. Even sinkings in the Pacific War had come as a slow, more measured kind of catastrophe—true naval warfare could be so much more gentlemanly.

But boats were not designed for combat against hulking demons of biomechanical terror, weighing in at tonnages that rendered even the lumbering form of the former Nigeru convenient as a rented umbrella.

Where the airforce generally scattered like flies or maintained a holding pattern at what they assumed was a safe altitude, the navy compliment to the JSSDF's assault force sat on the waterfront in agonizing sloth.

Aikata was three classes above Nigeru in size, one of the two largest vessels in the entire Japanese fleet. Six Aegis Mk. IIs, the American manufactured doomships of advanced warfare, circled it in a protective formation. Their missile batteries ignited as I loomed over the hillside and peeked at them like some weary, oversized turtle.

I picked up one Aegis in each fist, still barfing missiles that now detonated perilously close to their firing points—not that it would matter much longer anyways—and banged them together like crude metal maracas. My make shift instruments cracked on the first note, pouring out their rattling implements, no longer able to make samba rhythms.

_People,_ some part of me screamed, _those are people_ but I quieted him because Asuka was doing something very nearly like screaming of her own on the other end of the comm and _God damn it_ I was not about to let her die, not now.

I flung the shattered vessels at the nearest troop movement, a bank of highways on my far right, watching matchbox transports disintegrate into white light and the groaning of ruined engineering.

The other four had gone quiet. They'd run out of missiles or were reloading. Aikata was humming distinctly, like a gnat dive-bombing one's ear. Something near its bow was pointed at my chest. It didn't matter either way.

And then she let loose her maingun, a pinprick of white that grew like a razor torn in reality, slicing through the air between us and blinding me in its radiance: a smaller version of our positron rifle hardwired to the nuclear reactor in the ship's engine.

It came like a steel rod to my stomach.

Ungh, I might have muttered at the invisible fist, tasting vomit through LCL's sterility.

Asuka, heaping German curses, somewhere over the mountain ranges from me. Her clock was almost out. No time.

I picked the ship up by her up by the nose, watching the stern creak and bend perilously under strain engineers had never considered—icebergs sure, but not being lifted out of the ocean by a pair of angry hands. She was humming nastily again, the cannon charging up for another round.

One of the vultures seemed on the verge of getting back up, still lying in the wreckage of a mountainside artillery emplacement, fluttering its wings pathetically.

I launched Aikata like a crude discus aimed at the center of that ugly thing, spinning it so that the tip of the bow came round a full 180 degrees to meet the white demon's chin just as the maingun went off a second time—their last desperate barrage, intended for me, vaporized the head off of the Eva or the Angel or whatever the damn thing was before the reactor and the rest of the gunship's insides flattened against the hillside and went critical. A very distinctly quasi-nuclear cloud lofted as I felt something like a suntan touch my face at the speed of a passing train. Heat was a foreign notion in the Eva's nerves.

Didn't matter, Asuka and I were radiation proofed.

I turned in time to see a lance go through her face. She made a very real scream this time, authentic pain, not just frustrated anger, and I thought: _my God, I'm too late_.

The irony of my life is that I failed to save Asuka twice. The first time from some exotic matter primed to get jumpy and slithery at the touch of an AT Field and just wriggle right through it. The second, from a gun rented off a Yakuza dealer in a shady part of Roppongi.

You'd think they couldn't be any farther apart. But the feeling is identical. There's nothing like seeing someone you love hurt in that way. It changes you.

Later, the tally would come up to an equivalent of sixteen full infantry divisions MIA in the chaos. The S2 Engine's interaction with the JSSDF's radio equipment has rendered these men impossible to find. Another ten divisions of those confirmed KIA and innumerable casualties. Armored divisions were all but gone as well as artillery. The airforce was decimated, and the navy, though mostly out of fighting range, had heavy losses.

But, in one of the greatest revisions history will never know, some 90% of the JSSDF death toll are attributed to out of control mass production units undergoing a test activation on site and miscalculated N2 mine parameters.

Soldiers and NERV personnel killed inside the NERV-controlled sections of the Geofront are listed as fighting a terrorist force composed of unnamed spies and hell-bent fanatics for an obscure, fictional cult based out of Munich, Germany.

Keel Lorenz will be robbed and shot in his summer home in an unsolved murder. The officers on the case who examine the automatic weapons casings, grenade craters, and cordite explosive traces found near the edges of the secretive tycoon's compound will be given their pensions early and quietly remaindered to VIP-protection duties on yachts in the Mediterranean. They will never speak of it again and drink wine from 11:00 a.m. into the afternoon, chalking up strange fortunes to a God they may or may not believe in.

Dmitri Olugav's car will explode with he and his wife in it, no motive nor suspects uncovered. Fingers will be pointed at disgruntled connections leading back to the KGB. His oil empire will quietly implode without his leadership and embarrassing revelations about the executive's obsession with the Kabala.

Francios Berolt will be crushed by a train just outside a favorite vacation home in the South of France. Witnesses will recall several Mercedes-Benz speeding from the station but no one will be able to go on the record because it appears that no one has actually seen it. Berolt's holdings across fourteen major defense manufacturers will vanish overnight and stolen findings from CERN laboratories about primordial Earth will later appear in a Swiss Bank's safety deposit box under his daughter's name.

Guy Addingsford will be mugged and shot four times in one of the safest parts of London on his way home from the pub. His apartment will have burned down in the time it takes a passerby to notice his body. A subsequent investigation into his death by Parliament will eventually declare him an American spy and the Americans will in turn accuse him to be a spy for the Chinese.

Roger Delancey, a reclusive investment banker, will be killed in a hunting accident by his cabin in Montana. The CIA will quietly erase that the caliber of the bullets did not match his armory on stock, nor 114 shell casings recovered from the scene.

Wu Dao He, eccentric billionaire and entrepreneur, who briefly met Addingsford at a retreat in Berlin, will be found by fishermen in the Hong Kong Bay, his body shot and strangled. A journal entry, supposedly attributed to him, later surfaces on the internet. Titled "The Joy of Rebirth," it will only cast further mystery onto his death.

Japan's Prime Minister will resign on account of an unexpected stroke. He will die in the hospital a few days later of a massive heart attack.

Defense Minister Daido will be found disemboweled in his living room with a poem by Yukio Mishima covered in his blood. His wife will attest to the shame he felt at the faulty targeting of the N2 ordinance by throwing herself off a highway overpass two days later.

No one ever finds how many people I killed. Misato sees to it. I know it somehow, though it's never made explicit what she did and how.

If they did know what happened that day, I'd be the most prolific serial killer in recorded human history.

So if you're wondering—if you have any doubts at all that there was ever a cover-up—stop. Think about how they offed some of the richest, most powerful, dangerous men in the world for a PR campaign and tidying up. How no one stopped them or asked any uncomfortable questions. And then think about how easy it would be for Asuka to get away with the murders of some very average undergraduates.

Paranoia wasn't just an illness after NERV—it was a fact of my reality.

* * *

**Sixteenth Revolution: I thought I was loved.**

* * *

There is, however, a point where paranoia reaches a delightful crescendo, a sort of beautiful choreography that spins every cosmic turn, good or bad, into a great novel, the story of your life through the megalomaniacal lens of supreme narcissism. The problem with paranoia, coupled with celebrity, is that the line is so much blurrier than before. Suddenly everyone _does_ know your name; suddenly everyone _is_ talking about you, taking notice of you when you enter the restaurant; suddenly you _are_ getting those creepy, lingering looks.

Men in dark suits follow you around.

Your phone is most certainly tapped.

It's only once you start thinking Russian psychics from a long-forgotten Soviet-era program have planted a chip in your head that creates earthquakes in response to your erections that you can perhaps take a step back and reflect that, no, okay, maybe not. Maybe cats _aren't_ trying to warn you about the future after all.

I never reached that point.

Maybe the meds kept it in a state of manageable psychosis, a twilight between anxiety and madness, a sort of mountain resort where patients studied serial numbers on the back of monthly manga volumes to decipher the NHK's plans for the next prime minister. Or something even more whacked out about NERV.

I didn't have enough ignorance to buy into the conspiracy theories when it came to NERV because I knew the truth and it was so much more awful.

So I guess you could say I got back to campus in a moderately restive state. Sure I might have had a confrontation with Asuka, one now half-remembered which seemed to revolve distinctly around puke and longing, Yuki had stopped sleeping with me (an elective choice by her and a first in our relationship) and Kaji and Misato had indicated that Asuka might be—as if the crazy couldn't get any worse—in _love_ with me.

Moderately rested. All things considered.

Kazu is missing which I expected. I hoped one of my messages had gotten through, one of the ones sent from our throwaway phones that said Touji, Kensuke, and I had nothing to do with the premature death of our fellow senior. But would he really believe us anyways?

Maybe he thought our plan had gone awry, just has I had intended it to. Perhaps he'd somehow known my fiendish plan, seen into the heart of my determination to end him. Taki Iwamura, twisted in all the wrong directions.

Yet there are no brains on my doorstep, entering the dorms.

There is no note in the kitchen, written in Kazu's frayed hand.

The place looked exactly as I left it, so much so that I wonder if Kazu ever came back from break. Laying my stuff down in the room, there's an odd loneliness to our place. The last time we were here together, Kazu stormed out and the senior class ended up with one less on its graduating roster. The last time we were here, SEELE fell apart. Fractured. And now…

A gift?

It's in a plain cardboard box, bold Kanji written on a white piece of paper taped on the top: "Kaji." And on the back, "to the Kendo champ."

Hadn't he talked about being in his Kendo club in college or something? Before he'd had to drop out on account of hangovers and crazy Misato sex?

Figures.

"Oh, you shouldn't have," I offer up to no one, laughing at my faux appreciation.

As the cardboard panels pop off, my laughter dies a little. A sword. A huge fucking sword. It looks surprisingly authentic.

I unsheathe it and then I do something very stupid. I run my thumb along the edge like they always do in those films—and why not have my own little cinematic moment here in my room, with no one to watch me?—only, in movies, prop swords will let you do that because prop swords aren't made to kill. Even a katana of poor craftsmanship won't cut with pressure that gentle.

This one nearly takes the tip of my thumb off before I offer up a tiny shriek, dropping the implement and bolting to the bathroom. The edge of my thumb holds on just barely as it spews blood into the sink. I spout curses and moans in equal measure.

"Kajimotherfuckerowwgoddamnswordwhothefuckgetsarealswordthesedaysowow_owOWOW_fuckerdamnitfuck"

Nice Ikari, fucking Miyamoto Musashi right there. I can't even put it in my mouth to suck on—I'd risk taking swallowing the cleaved flesh. So I make pathetic whimpering noises as I press the ends together and pray to obscure deities of private clumsiness.

And then, feeling truly embarrassed, I go back to my bedroom, scrub the blood out of the carpet and wrap the maimed thumb in gauze. The bleeding slows.

It should have been a dead giveaway that something was wrong about the gift. You do _not_ give someone on anti-psychotics a sword that can cut bone like bread. They don't even put that one in the manual. It's just assumed that in good faith, you would have the working common sense to realize what a bad idea it is.

Misato would never in her right mind have allowed it to get past Section Two. The Ring of Steel around our campus would have vetoed it without her explicit permission. It should have been the tell, that one strange note you get when something's gone a little sideways in the concerto of life.

But, sitting their on my hands and knees, bright yellow rubber gloves hanging on my writsts, all limp and squishy, I just kept looking at the blood in the carpet. And then thinking of Iyori Kurokawa.

Blood. Iyori. Killed by a train? There had to have been a lot of blood. A death like that? Of course.

Blood.

"If you hurt him, I'll kill you.

--Asuka"

The ink was red. The ink was _red_.

I go into my closet and pop the false wall I've installed in it. Inside, documents from SEELE come spilling forth, identities of no ones, manifestos written by ghosts, climbing equipment, lockpicks, clothes. It's a big chamber, in between the drywall and the brick of the actual outer structure. Somehow the sword fits, though I can't really understand why I'm putting it there, just following the Vicodin momentum and then I feel the business card. Text has turned brown and black like an angry stain. Like someone's blood.

The one she slipped under the door. The warning Yuki never got.

* * *

"Kensuke, I need you to run some tests, _discreetly_."

"Why, thanks, I _did_ have a nice break!" He frowns, rubbing at the bridge of his nose where his glasses used to rest. Contacts, now. How cool we are.

Daisuke leans over from his bunk.

"Tests? You swabbin' some girls panties for traces of your goo? You goo her, bro? Playin' that field?"

Ah Daisuke, how well I'd avoided you up until now. Your trashy innuendos about Asuka, your complete insecurity over your own masculinity. Your moronic delight. Meeting you that first day. Those awkward questions over whether or not Asuka and I were a thing.

Of course not, notice how she didn't fucking wave, how she looked away as if I didn't even exist you know, not exactly normal couple's behavior more like I hope you burn in hell asshole behavior not that you have any intuition and by the way I know you're fucking cheating in calculus and I will call your ass out if I should ever feel so inclined you little _shit_.

"I will end you," I whisper to the stunned face in the top bunk, offering a look that could chew through titanium.

Daisuke must get the message. He rolls over, and puts on a very big pair of headphones. I think I can almost hear the tears rolling down his cheeks. Spurned by his idol. How's that for an autograph?

Kensuke fixes me with an angry glare.

"What the hell has gotten into you lately?" he growls.

"He's an asshole."

Kensuke nods. "Yeah, and he probably deserved that too but come on Shinji, that isn't you. You don't do shit like that because you're better than that." And then a weak smile. "That was, like, a straight up Touji-move right there."

"Totally," I say, returning the smile more brightly. For a moment, the world isn't coming to pieces. We almost laugh. Then I feel the business card in my jeans' pocket again.

"Kensuke." I fall back into it, the morbidity, the darkness. "I need you to find a way to get some unauthorized lab time. In Genetics."

He flicks the laptop open, and the grumbles start pouring forth.

"Do you have any idea how difficult that is? That place is one of the best in Japan, they have lockdown on everything from the test tubes all the way up to the electron microscopes. I mean, it's not like I'm a miracle worker…"

And I slide the card down in front of the screen. It stops him.

"Oh," he says, a tiny sound that means so much more than anything else he could offer and then, "I see… what you mean."

"I want you to run the ink through the sequencer," I elaborate, watching him turn from the card to me, then back, as the math in his head starts playing out.

Almost without thinking, he begins, "But the sequencer only works on—"

"Blood."

He runs a finger across the card's surface, pulls it away, rubbing his fingers together.

"Right."

* * *

Kazu is missing. Not at asaren. Not at any of the classes we have together. He never picks up the phone. He's like one of our three fake students—he's in the files, he's got the bank statements, the phone number, the student ID, there but for the flesh itself. Elusive.

I try phoning any number of the girls he's been dating. None of them have seen him. They're worried, even more so when they find out why I'm calling. Yet others on campus seem to have spotted him. A glimpse here at the freshly scrubbed library. A breakfast there at the cafeteria.

Kazu, I realize with a cold amusement, is _avoiding us_. Using the tricks we've devised for moving around campus undetected to keep out of our way. Kazu had always been the best at our stealth routines, he'd taken to them easily, as if they fit some part of him. Now he used them to full-effect and slipped away like a handful of water.

We tried to get by, answering small emails, working small miracles for the first week of new classes.

Help me get into Advanced Poetry, the quota's full.

A quick hack through administration's files, altering the classroom space to make it look as if it always housed thirty-two.

My heater won't turn on.

So we become midnight aircon repairmen, slipping into boiler rooms, adjusting obscure gauges.

Help me decide what to wear for Spring formal.

A short email reply: You look best in dark colors, try something slim and backless from this Takashimaya clearance and Azu will be all over you. He falls for the cocktail party look like a ship's anchor.

Sometimes, running a secret society isn't such rough work. Sometimes it's fun.

Even with the lurking dread your friend thinks you killed someone.

Or that worse feeling, that a friend is killing people for you, her obscure way of protecting you, of _falling in love_.

Maybe it makes up for the fact Yuki won't return your calls. That she's devastated, how she must know that some part of your feelings for Asuka haven't disappeared, no matter what you may have told her in the past and how could she ever compete with a shared history like that one? How it must terrify her to have a rival for affection like that?

There was no young woman more envied in Japan.

Life goes on. But it's a special kind of monotony, a desert of the mundane, wearing you down, carving despair into your heart. No warm body to lie next to at night. That frothing jealousy of how ignorant and petty your fellow students' requests are. They ask for such simple things, simple problems with simple solutions.

How did my life get so complicated, yet boring, unfair, and grinding?

I wasn't in the best of moods when I stalked over to Yuki's corner of campus in the third week of January. I might have been, as one could say, on a bit of a tear. Not alcohol but fear and anger in equal parts.

Fear that she would never touch me again. Anger that I'd let it come to this. Fear that Asuka had driven a wedge between us. Anger that some part of me was resigned to that. Fear that maybe all my great investigating had no meaning, that maybe there weren't Bad Things lurking in the shadows, Section Two paving over reality with pleasant fictions. And another fear that maybe, somewhere, Asuka was still quietly killing people and thinking of me as she did it. Anger that this thrilled me in some perverse, haunted way.

I'd cut all my meds two days ago. It was something the doctors had warned against, added to the long list of other instructions I'd managed to ignore. Its absence had gone from a nagging blank to a throbbing, painful emptiness. My joints ached with each step. Something like a headache had been raging for the past six hours, swirling behind my eyeballs, desperate for something to ingest.

I was learning how shitty it was to be a drug addict and hating myself for it. My only respite from coming down from it all, I'd decided, was her.

Fuck it, I have to talk to her. I have to explain things.

A friend of hers, Saya-something grabs me on the way in.

"You're looking for her?"

I nod.

"She's not here. You should come back later."

"That's fine. I'll just wait outside her room." No I won't. Not a chance in hell. I'll break down the damn door if I have to.

"Shinji, she's… she's just upset, it's just a temporary thing, she's not herself, you know? Just, please, come back later. Okay?"

Let go of my fucking arm. Her hand stings, like it's burning me, it feels my blood won't pump past her grip. My skin is hurting all over it seems. I just want her to let go.

I pull away, wordlessly.

"Don't," she cries but I'm past her and moving down the hall. With purpose. Have to see Yuki. Have to make everything okay. Have to explain.

Reaching for the handle, the door is open and—

Have you ever been betrayed? By someone you love? Someone you trust, someone you look up to and think the world of? Not those gentle accidents common to friends, little bumps and blemishes of unattended pain as someone skirts over a bruise from your past, makes and joke that cuts more than it makes merry, does some mindless rudeness, unintended, thoughtless. Not one of those.

Have you ever been betrayed by a friend? You catch them doing something you know they shouldn't? Giving away one of your secrets? Spreading rumors about you? Indicting you with quiet scorn when they think you aren't looking?

I've had all of these happen to me. Brief acquaintances annihilated by jealousy or foolish egos, people who so desired to be around me but couldn't stand how the spotlight would fix me when I turned up at a party, flirted with some coed, something, anything. The little hateful things that would find their way back.

That was the insanity of doing SEELE. Of all the requests, how many that came back spiting me.

Shinji Ikari totally flirted with my girlfriend and now she doesn't like me anymore… help me beat him up?

Shinji Ikari is the pet of my history teacher and I know I wrote a better paper than him but he still got a higher grade.

Shinji Ikari is so full of himself, can you pull a prank on him and just take him down a notch or two please?

Kill Shinji Ikari.

That had been one of the ones we'd tried to laugh about. It was from Daichi. About a week before he fractured my face in the middle of the quad. Before he hung himself in the gym locker rooms. Misato had been right. He could have killed me, if he'd had a little more time.

Have you ever been betrayed by someone worthy of affection? What about two people?

The door opens and—

Kazu, looking distinctly out of the corner of his eye, startled but frozen.

Kazu.

And Yuki has her arms around him.

Kazu?

"Oh." I feel my breath catch as a hundred emotions vie for my attention. I'm despair, pick me, I throw a really good party. I'm shock, pick me, I'm exciting! I'm rage, pick me, we'll do some exercise… I'm…

I'm…

"I'm sorry."

The oldest of habits never fails.

And Yuki's trying to let go of him but they stay tangled a moment, now I see just how close together they were pressed, then they pop apart like magnets losing their grip and Kazu kind of bounces into the wall behind him.

Her face is flushing that same color she makes when she orgasms. Kazu looks away from me, hiding, and I think he just wants to curl up and die at that moment and that would be fine with me, really, honestly, I don't care, it's no big deal, not like I loved her or anything, not like I'm in… I'm…

"I'm sorry."

Backing out.

Yuki seems to have got the picture now, her shock boiling over, taking a step towards me, then another. Suddenly it's terrifying, terrifying to imagine she'll bridge that gap, cover the distance between us and pull me into those slender arms, the ones that I very much want to be held by, the ones that look like claws now so I'm backing up further and further, heart pounding, so scared, so afraid to be touched. Those hands will burn, some part of me tells you, and the scars will never go away.

"No," she starts, "it's not… like that… It's not what you think."

Backing up further, get away from me! Why won't you all just go and DIE!

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm…"

Tripping so I almost fall over but then I remember there are things behind me, places to run to from this, places so far away from these feelings, dull, quiet places in tiny orange bottles with safety caps and warning labels and gentleness and lovely, lovely nothing.

"You don't understand!" I hear her, yelling but my feet have taken off running. They won't stop.

I pass by Saya-something, nearly flying now at full sprint—_"You should come back later"_—Aha, I see, why thank you, how typical I should ignore the only sound advice. My tears are hot against the January chill. I don't break stride at the edge of campus but out, out past train tracks with dead children on them, out past love hotels, pachinko parlors filled with lonely drunks, past gardens and tuna dinners that always come on time, out past the suburbs, the quiet housewives with loving children and loving husbands and loving pets where everyone gets together for dinner and the man does not cheat on her when he's away for business trips and she does not invite the plumber into their bedroom while he's at work and everything is fine and perfect and wonderful, just the way it's supposed to be, up through these darkened streets, the sun setting early, and out into the mountains, into the places of misty hush where we run our monster marathons at asaren to forget what we were and turn into something new and the city of Tokyo gleams poised and beautiful below, so much steel and concrete catching dying sunlight, up into the mountains, further, not allowing myself even one instant's pause but my lungs blow fire and the headache erupts through my temples, breaking fissures underneath my scalp, volcanic, building until I cannot take the pressure anymore and I hold the sides of my head, nails drawing blood from above my ears, a ringing growing louder and louder, I mustn't run away, I mustn't run away, I mustn't run away, filling up everything in my heart so that all I can do is, _I mustn't run away_, SCREAM.

* * *

A/N: So begins the fourth arc. I would ask you to pardon the long pause between chapters but that just seems unfair. It took me a long time to figure out how to start this chapter as this story is now entering the last phase of its life and I'm beginning to realize I'm going to have to wrap up the damn thing. And as you can see things are just going to get crazier. Once again, I give props to my readers, particularly Fresh C for encouraging me to work on finishing this before returning my attentions to my other stories that are stalled here. I am hopeful the next chapters will be easier to do because I know where this story is going and I'm very close to getting it there. I would also just like to thank you all again for your comments and criticisms; a lot of them have been very insightful into the nature of the story and many have also helped me grow as a writer. I know I don't always reply to the reviews, even the really really interesting ones because there is a temptation to try and answer your questions or talk about where this story is going and frankly I think the surprise is way too awesome to bear doing that. But if you stick with me till the end, I will do my best to send you some thoughtful commentary at the end of this long haul. Merry Xmas!

PS: Did you know I once sang Bohemian Rhapsody to my ex while we were at a karaoke bar with her new boyfriend? Probably one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my life, but then again, who else in the world can say that and really mean it? I lived it, man! Heartbreak blows!


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